193: Unproductivity
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Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.
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I'm Marco Arment.
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And I'm David Smith.
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Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
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So as we're recording this, it's sort of the middle of June in 2020.
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So if you're looking back at this and you hear that the year is 2020, you may have some
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sense of the unprecedented year we've been having.
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That seems to be the term that's been thrown around a lot.
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And it's like, I don't even know where to begin for all the things that are happening
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that are not normal, are atypical, are significant, are emotional, are frustrating.
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And so as the year starts out and we start to have the coronavirus outbreak and it totally
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upends everything and causes widespread sickness and tragedy, and as right as we get to the
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point where we start to perhaps slightly see the end of this and things open up, there's
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all of the awfulness going on.
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The issues around racism in the US and police brutality and the way those things are reacted
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to and the protests around that, and all of these things come together.
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And it's worth saying, I think, Marco and I, we are firmly against racism and all of
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its guises as structural and personal and all of the awful things that are happening
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But as a result of all of those things, at least I can speak for myself, there is just
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this general sense of difficulty and challenge.
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As it relates to my work, it's been very difficult in this last six months to be productive,
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to get the normal amount of work done that I would hope to do or expect myself to do
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or want to do.
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It's really hard to want to focus or be able to focus on the things that relate to my job
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when it feels like everything around you is falling apart and going crazy and everything's
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And it seemed like a topic, though, that is probably worth just discussing and talking
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through some observations around what the impacts of having these external factors in
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the world that are big and significant and weighty can have on you emotionally and how
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they can relate to your productivity and your work.
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And then also, on the more positive side, is hopefully to talk about some of the strategies
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and things that you can do, that I've done, that Marco's done, that have helped.
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Many of these things, when something is happening outside in the world more generally, there's
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only so much that we can do to affect change to that and to eliminate it.
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It isn't like I'm sitting in a chair that's uncomfortable and if I go and get a new chair,
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suddenly my work environment can be more productive or more comfortable.
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These are situations that are broad and wide in the world.
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There aren't these simple and easy quick fixes, but there are certainly strategies and things
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that we can do to mitigate the effect on us and to help us both emotionally and for our
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mental health as well as our productivity and our ability to continue doing our jobs
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in the midst of things that make that really difficult.
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Yeah, because ultimately, as Dave said, this has been a really messed up year so far.
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And the major factors, basically being COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests against
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police brutality, that's not likely to go away quickly.
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These problems aren't just going to be solved tomorrow and everything will go back to "normal."
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That's not going to happen.
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Any return to something closer to normal is going to just take time.
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It's going to be a gradual process and it's already been months.
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I mean, we talked about doing this episode months ago and we kept having other things
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to talk about, but it's already been months that we've been quarantined and going through
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the COVID-19 pandemic and all those things.
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This is such a not normal time that I personally, I know many people out there have had to do
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that trouble.
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I personally have had a lot of trouble getting any work done whatsoever.
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And I think that's okay.
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When we first started out with the quarantine, certainly one of the fastest issues we had
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to face was what do we do about school?
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We both have children.
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You had a different situation than I do.
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My situation was my kid went to a public school.
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He goes to a regular school and his school was closed.
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So everyone started doing basically web remote teaching and web remote learning.
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So he has to do video chats and fill out worksheets and everything.
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That's been difficult for everyone, for the teachers, for the students, for the parents,
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because nobody was prepared for that.
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It's a hugely different shift in how things have to work.
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Everybody has to do things they haven't done before in ways they haven't done before.
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It was extremely disruptive.
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The question certainly arose of how much work should your children be doing during this
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How much should you try to stick with school?
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For some people, school is what makes their kids feel normal.
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So they try to do as structured of a day as possible for their kids.
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For other people, their kids don't thrive in a school environment and school is stressful.
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Moving it to home and trying to reproduce as much of the school day as possible at home
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was a source of stress for a lot of people, not a source of normalcy and structure.
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So you had to make a judgment call based on who you knew your kid to be of like, "Do
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we make them work a lot or do we make them work just what they need to do bare minimum
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and let them chill for the rest of the time?"
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And I think back, nobody looks back on periods of disasters or tragedies or wars or things
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No one looks back on that time later and says, "I wish I was more productive during that
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These are serious times where serious stuff is going on, much of which is negative.
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And it's okay during that time to not overwork yourself or your kids or whatever, your employees.
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It's totally okay to not overwork people.
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In fact, you should be doing the opposite.
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You should be underworking yourself during this time because there's a lot to process
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and deal with in the world right now.
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There are major shifts happening all around us.
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There are major, you know, heavy dark times happening and many things have become more
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difficult or more time consuming for us to handle at home or at work.
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And so we need to leave space to breathe and to relax and to process this and to have some
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And the good thing is that what most of us do, I think one of the unintentional positive
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side effects of the quarantine period has been that a lot of the stuff that we used
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to do day to day that we told ourselves we had to do, we actually don't have to do.
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Or we can get away with doing a lot less of it.
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And so I think we can apply a lot of that to our indie lives as well.
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Indie life has been largely, for me, about trying to do as little work as possible, trying
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to commit to as little time requirement as possible.
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I don't want to create a job for myself where I have to wake up and do six hours of work
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every single day, otherwise the job falls apart.
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It's more bursty where if I want to go a day without doing any work whatsoever, that's
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The work will wait or the app will run itself to some degree.
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If I want to have a week where I do nothing, if I want to go on vacation, which is always
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a healthy thing, we've talked about that, I want to have a business where it can take
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a week of me not putting much or any time into it.
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With the quarantine, I think what we've seen is we need even more slack in the system than
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we initially thought for certain large scale disasters like this.
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And I've been fortunate that my, like, for the whole first month, I didn't really do
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I got almost no work done for like a month.
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And nothing bad happened to my business.
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It was fine.
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My business, like, my app is in a stable-ish state.
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Everything was fine.
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Usage went down, money went down a little bit, but it wasn't like fatally so.
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And so everything was just running kind of in like, you know, stable mode waiting for
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whenever I want to work on it next.
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And it's really great to put yourself in a position where you can have that kind of slack
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in your business, where you can have that kind of like built in buffer on everything
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and be like, "All right, it's okay if I don't work for a little while."
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And you know, the business won't die.
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My app won't stop working.
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You know, everything will be fine.
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And all those like feature updates that you want to do or redesigns or whatever, you know
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what, maybe those can wait.
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Does it really matter if you redesign the app this year or next year?
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You know, does it really matter if you add this feature that 10% of your people are asking
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for now or in a year from now?
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Probably not.
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So ultimately, I think it's very valuable to let yourself recognize that these are not
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normal times and give yourself the room to breathe and give yourself time off and not
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to beat yourself up over it.
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Because again, like I think in five years from now, no one's gonna be looking back at
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this time and saying, "Wow, I really wish I added two more features during the quarantine."
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And I feel like so much of these, like it makes me think of one of the best analogies
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I ever have, or the analogy that I find useful for myself in terms of understanding my capacity
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for doing things is to think of like my life is like this, I have a box, and I can choose
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which things I put into that.
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And it's like, I can put in sleep, and I can put in exercise, and I can put in eating,
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I can put in relationships, I can put in work, I can put in all of the various like homework,
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whatever those things are that I need to do.
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But the size of the box is sort of outside of my control.
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And in many ways, you have situations like this where suddenly I feel like the box got
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smaller, and it got smaller because of the emotional strain and the uncertainty and the
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difficulty that sort of surrounds what we're doing.
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And it's like at a certain point, you have to decide, "Well, what are you going to take
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What are you going to not, what are you going to take out of the box because the box is
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It can't hold as much as it used to."
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And that calculus is really complicated, but it's one of those things.
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There is no way to change that.
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Like you can't just like say, sort of like the old thing of, "Oh, I wish I had 25 hours
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It's like, you can't.
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Like they're sort of trying to sort of fake it by working extra hours.
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It's like all you're doing is you're taking away from sleep, probably, or you're taking
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away from relationships, or you're taking away from something else.
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Like ultimately, everything has to balance out.
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And I think what's, it certainly is, everyone's situation is different.
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And I think it is certainly one of the great things that I'm very appreciative of, of the
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kind of the typical sort of software development lifecycle is such that it is one that has
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a lot of slack in it.
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That it is a situation where if I need to take out several units of software development
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so that I can make sure that I don't have to take out any of my, you know, sort of sleep
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or wellbeing or relationships or connection, I can leave all those in the box and I can
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take out some work right now.
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Like that is a tremendously fortunate place to be.
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And obviously that's dependent on the kind of work you do.
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And even if you are an independent developer, if you're doing a lot of consulting work or
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something like that, where even if it's, you know, even sort of in the most specific cases,
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if it's like hourly consulting, that there's like a very fixed number of hours that you
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need to be sitting down working on a project.
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Like maybe you don't have that flexibility to be able to do that.
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But there's a certainly is important to understand that ever all of these things are going to
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be this necessary trade off that like, whatever, you know, you have to decide what are the
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things that you're going to allow you, what you're going to choose to put into the box
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and understand that when things are all turned upside down, like that calculus and that choice
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is going to be harder.
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And unfortunately, most of the things that you can do to kind of try if you want to try
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and keep your productivity normal in an unnormal time, are going to ultimately probably make
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it worse in the long term.
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That if you take like, it's very, very normal right now to feel emotional in big ways.
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And that can be all kinds of different emotions.
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But like, it's going to be just general latent emotional state right now, at least for myself
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is very much higher than, you know, it was perhaps a year ago.
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And so, like, understand that, but like, if I don't, if I decided to, like, instead of
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taking out work, if I took out sleep, or exercise or diet or those types of things, and it's
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like left, left all my work in there, my emotional state is all is necessarily going to suffer.
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And ultimately, like, that's, it's going to be counterproductive that I'm going to eventually
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not be able to do that, especially in a situation like this, where it isn't a short term fixed
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duration, like sprint, it's this very open ended, who knows how long situation.
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And so it's like, you have to be have to be planning and making choices that allow us
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to be as best like the best situation that we can do for as long as we can.
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And like, it's also really something that's also probably worth saying is, it's also really
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a common thing, at least for myself to not know what I should be doing.
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That it's easy, you know, like, for me to, like, have a nice picture of like, I have
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this box, and I have these different boxes that I want to put inside of it.
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And I can kind of sit there and I can play the play the Jenga game of what I want to
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put in and what I want to take out.
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The reality is, is very often I often just feel like I don't know what I'm doing, and
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I don't know what to do.
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And I think in those situations, it's certainly like there are things that I find that the
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easiest things to start with are the things that you know, will sort of build you up into
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things that will encourage you and improve your physical and mental health.
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And putting those things in first, and then seeing what you have left to make decisions
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with is a great place to, I think, start kind of just filtering through these big feelings
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and dealing with like, what do you do when everything's going crazy?
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It's like, start with the things that you know kind of make it better for you.
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And if ultimately, like, other things fall out and things don't get put back in the
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box, like, that's totally fine.
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And that's totally normal.
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Yeah, totally.
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One thing I've been helped by a lot during this time is that, as developers, we know
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that there's some work that's just not very fun to do that we have to do.
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Fixing some kind of obscure, deep crash in something that affects 1% of your people,
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that's not fun.
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Or adopting some new Apple technology that you kind of have to, but you haven't been
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looking forward to.
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Like, "Oh, great, they deprecated this entire old API, and I have to replace it with this
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There's certain kind of just grunt work involved here.
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There's also fun stuff.
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Everyone loves starting a new project.
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New stuff is always fun.
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People love starting new projects.
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I can absolutely confirm this.
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Well, new projects, new features, new apps, new little fun stuff, that's like the ice
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cream of development.
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It's like, everyone loves that part.
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Starting the new stuff is great.
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Grinding away at maintenance or old stuff is less fun.
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You mentioned before, trying to figure out what you want to do during this time.
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One thing that helped me a lot is I wrote the entire ATP CMS in this time.
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It's been a large project.
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It's still ongoing because I'm building the membership stuff now.
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It's still ongoing.
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Starting a new project, even though I've also been doing overcast work at the same time,
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but just a lot less of it.
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I've been focusing much more on the ATP stuff for now because I needed something to get
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me out of the unproductivity funk that I was in for a month or more at the beginning of
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the project.
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I knew that working on a bug fix version of overcast is not going to do that.
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Working on a brand new, totally different kind of project that was a lot of fun and
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it's smaller scope, easier in a lot of ways, that really got me going again.
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I wouldn't say I'm in a great state of mind in the middle of all this, but my state
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of mind was dramatically improved once I got going on that project.
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I broke the funk.
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I broke the inactive depression period.
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I shoved myself into this project that made me very happy.
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You mentioned exercise a minute ago and I'm sure we're going to talk more about it
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in a second, but one of the reasons why you want to exercise is that you feel good after
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For me, I also feel that same kind of satisfaction when I've exercised my brain.
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For a month, I didn't do that.
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Once I started exercising my brain again by having these solid coding productivity days,
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I felt significantly improved on those days.
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I've tried to keep that going as much as I could because, again, at times like this,
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take whatever you can get.
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I think favored projects are doing the work that you enjoy.
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There's just work that we enjoy as developers.
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There's reasons why we got into this business in the first place.
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There's certain kinds of problems, certain kinds of tasks that are interesting and fun.
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I definitely agree that this is a tremendously good opportunity to try as best you can to
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work on that.
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If you have the ability and the flexibility to do that, pick up a feature or a project
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or an idea that you are excited about.
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Honestly, if you have any excitement about anything when it feels like the world's falling
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apart, go with that.
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Don't let that spark go out.
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Fan that flame as much as you can and take advantage of it.
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I find it's very hard to force your mind to do something it doesn't want to do or it doesn't
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feel like you're excited or interested in doing.
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Eventually that grunt work, that deep bug fix that you're trying to find that affects
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a few numbers of people, eventually you're probably going to have to do it.
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Maybe not, who knows?
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Maybe it's actually not as big of a deal as you thought.
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But the reality is, if you have something that's exciting to you, go for it.
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That was the entire reason I just finished building this whole map, built an entire mapping
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system for the Apple Watch from scratch because it just wedged in my brain.
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I was like, "I'm excited about this.
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I'm going to work on it."
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I did and I felt productive.
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Just like you said, there is something good and wholesome about building something and
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being productive and having that sense that you accomplish something that is a positive
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for your mental health and a positive for your ability to get back into the groove and
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maybe be able to tackle less favorite projects.
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But I think it's a great opportunity to think of that and to find things that you
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have that kind of interest for.
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This is the perfect opportunity to do that.
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Whatever that might be, that can be small, that could be big, it can be learning something
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that you've been wanting to learn for a while but have been putting off.
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Maybe now is an interesting time to do that.
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It's just going to be very different for everyone but that's definitely something that I've
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It's certainly something that I'm continuing to do.
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I have my list of features that are my grown-up, "One day I'll need to deal with this bug
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But the reality is I'm having much more fun and much more actual productivity building
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new stuff that I think is interesting.
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Every time I pick up one of those features or these bugs that I need to track down, I
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end up spending four hours doing nothing.
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I'm just running around hitting dead ends and my productivity and my ability to do that
00:22:47
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kind of work right now is just limited.
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I feel like that's the work you have to do when you're in a prime state where everything
00:22:53
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is going right and everything is good.
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If you're not in a prime state because everything around you is not so good, that's not the
00:23:01
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time to worry about those features.
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As best you can, just put them off.
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So many other things that I think we can do outside of the work itself too.
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Exercise is great just in terms of being active is just good for our well-being.
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I think especially now, it is something that is so hard to be outside that whatever fitness
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looks like for you, you can do some amount of exercise in any amount of space.
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You don't need a huge amount of space or equipment or a situation to just be up and active and
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get your blood flowing.
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That has just tremendous positive effects on you.
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I think another related thing is just the importance of taking breaks.
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Fitness and exercise is a great break to take.
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That's a nice short thing to say, "In the middle of the day, I'm going to stop and
00:23:50
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I'm going to do 100 jumping jacks," or whatever it might be.
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Do 10 push-ups.
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It doesn't actually matter what you're doing, but taking breaks from your work and
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exercise is a great place to do that.
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That can be a short thing or a long thing, but just giving yourself permission that you
00:24:07
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don't need to be nose to the grindstone the whole time.
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Even better is perhaps if you can take those breaks and combine exercise and nature, like
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going for a walk outside, going for a run, going for a bike ride, whatever is appropriate
00:24:20
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for your situation.
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I find that just being outside and being around nature is just very soothing in general.
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Something that I think is a very apt and effective thing, if that's something that's possible
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for you to do right now, it's a great way to take a break and reset and just lower the
00:24:41
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– I feel like it lowers my anxiety when I'm just out in nature.
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It's certainly a strategy that I've been using a lot recently to try and help.
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Yeah, I've been doing all that as well because there are real reasons for this.
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There's actual body chemistry and body health improvements that happen when you get any
00:25:03
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exercise or when you get sunlight and fresh air.
00:25:07
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This is not just mumbo jumbo, hippie stuff.
00:25:10
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This is actually real science.
00:25:13
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Your body actually is healthier and happier when you have exercise and fresh air and sunlight.
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Do what you can.
00:25:21
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Again, it's like because we're in a hard time, we keep saying just do what you can
00:25:25
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to improve things for yourself and to get through it.
00:25:28
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This is part of that.
00:25:29
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Give yourself the best chance to feel good, as good as you can, by indulging yourself
00:25:36
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in the things that you like, the work that you like, the activities that you like, and
00:25:41
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by giving your body the chemistry it needs to be happy through things like exercise and
00:25:46
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Yeah, and I think also, I think it's a very, very useful thing to keep in mind, as you
00:25:53
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were saying earlier, if you just didn't work on your app for a year, how bad would
00:25:58
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that actually be?
00:25:59
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Would you go out of business?
00:26:00
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Would everyone immediately stop buying it?
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Possibly if you're in a rough state, but probably not.
00:26:06
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Most apps could take a long time without major updates and be fine business-wise.
00:26:11
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You do the updates usually because you want to or because you want to remain competitive
00:26:15
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or whatever, but you don't actually have to do that as much as you might think.
00:26:21
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That's something to keep in mind as well.
00:26:22
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Finally, I think the timing of this, assuming that the rest of the year might be closer
00:26:27
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to normal, which granted is not a safe assumption, but assuming that the worst is probably behind
00:26:33
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us, this is actually a really good time for this in the year because we've talked about
00:26:38
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before the seasonality of being an app developer and how right before WWDC, for the few months
00:26:44
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before it, is a great time to not be doing a whole bunch of major changes to your app
00:26:50
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because the whole world that we rest on is about to shift when WWDC happens and then
00:26:56
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we have the summer of betas and the fall of releases and new hardware.
00:27:01
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This has always been a good time of year for us to do more exploratory work or try new
00:27:06
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projects or back off and do something fun while we wait for WWDC.
00:27:11
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The timing of this is actually really good.
00:27:14
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As we lead into WWDC in a couple of weeks now, I think it'll be interesting to see,
00:27:19
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first of all, how big of a year does this end up being for Apple because they've had
00:27:22
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challenges too because they've also been quarantined and slowed down and delayed probably in a
00:27:27
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lot of ways.
00:27:28
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We don't know how big of a year it's going to be for the APIs and for the platforms and
00:27:32
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later on for the hardware, but it's interesting to think we've had all this time that we could
00:27:37
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have been doing all this exploratory stuff and for the next few weeks we still can with
00:27:41
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basically no burden from Apple on you better hurry up and adopt this thing because right
00:27:46
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now we don't know what that is yet.
00:27:48
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Honestly, I'm just excited about seeing what gets announced.
00:27:54
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One of my favorite things is coming up with finding a favorite project or finding something
00:28:00
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interesting.
00:28:01
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WWDC is ground zero for that.
00:28:04
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Here is Apple coming up and saying, "Here's all this new interesting stuff that we think
00:28:08
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you should try and explore."
00:28:09
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It's like, "Hooray!"
00:28:12
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I'm really just looking forward to doing that.
00:28:16
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It wouldn't surprise me at all if this is a year where it works well to be a bit more
00:28:22
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exploratory and enjoy that.
00:28:26
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Especially if there's some new thing that you think is really cool and interesting,
00:28:30
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If you're excited about it, it's a great time to dive into that.
00:28:35
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I do hope that there is also something I will say that is slightly comforting to me about
00:28:41
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the thought of a WWDC keynote that has been such a fixture in my life for so long that
00:28:47
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there is something normative about it that it makes me hopeful that it will be an experience.
00:28:54
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I know what to expect and I know what comes next.
00:28:56
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Hopefully, we're getting into a more stable place and that will be a great opportunity
00:29:01
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to hopefully have this mid-year reset and kind of re-decide what I want to work on the
00:29:06
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rest of the year and just see where it goes.
00:29:08
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I'm very much looking forward to it as well for all the same reasons.
00:29:12
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As you said, the fun part of development so often is that new stuff, new projects.
00:29:19
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Go to Xcode, file a new project, and try something totally new.
00:29:24
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Beta season is an especially fun time to do that.
00:29:27
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I'm looking forward to the escape that will provide and to the little opportunities for
00:29:33
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satisfaction that we've got afterwards.
00:29:36
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Hopefully it's a good year.
00:29:37
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The show will be after the keynote so we will know a lot more about it and we'll do it
00:29:41
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We will talk to you then and have a wonderful two weeks, everyone.
00:29:44
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Thanks for listening.
00:29:46
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[BLANK_AUDIO]