0:00:00Welcome to Under the Radar,
0:00:01a show about independent iOS app development.
0:00:03I'm Mark Orment.
0:00:05- And I'm David Smith.
0:00:06Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes,
0:00:08so let's get started.
0:00:09- Happy New Year, everybody.
0:00:11- Happy New Year.
0:00:12- We decided to talk about what it's like
0:00:15to get back into work after a break,
0:00:17like the New Year's break.
0:00:19Just the kind of getting your brain back into that space,
0:00:22into the pace of work.
0:00:23And then once you finally get there,
0:00:26how do you decide even what to tackle?
0:00:29Because chances are, after a big vacation
0:00:32or after the holiday break,
0:00:33holidays are especially bad at it,
0:00:35but after these things,
0:00:36we tend to have a lot of stuff piled up,
0:00:38a lot of things that we need to address,
0:00:41work that accumulated while we were gone,
0:00:43things that we should probably get going on.
0:00:45And so there's a bit of a tricky question
0:00:47about how do you prioritize those things.
0:00:50And then once you get going with working,
0:00:51like how do you get going?
0:00:54How do you begin work?
0:00:57And then after that, I think we wanna talk a little bit
0:00:59about how do we plan kind of the first few months
0:01:03of the year, you know,
0:01:04that in the case of a New Year's break like this,
0:01:07you know, we have,
0:01:09there's a lot of things about the corporate world
0:01:11that go by years, things like, you know,
0:01:13ad budgets, PR needs, everything else.
0:01:15We talked before about seasonality.
0:01:17And so the first few months of the year
0:01:18is an interesting time to plan for,
0:01:21to get things done, to consider, you know,
0:01:24what to work on, whether to release things,
0:01:26and everything else.
0:01:27We're gonna get into all of that.
0:01:29Dave, are you back to work yet?
0:01:31- Yes.
0:01:33Only just.
0:01:34I think I've essentially did,
0:01:36I mean, it's kind of a strange end of the year
0:01:39because I was launching a new app,
0:01:40which I usually don't like to do that time of year.
0:01:43But for this particular time,
0:01:46like I'd hoped originally to launch Workouts++
0:01:49in probably November or something,
0:01:50but it just didn't end up working out.
0:01:52Like the project took longer than I'd originally expected.
0:01:55And so it was, you know, launched,
0:01:57I think it was December 21st or something,
0:02:00which is not advisable,
0:02:01and especially because you kind of go through the process
0:02:04of launching something, you get it out,
0:02:06and then all of a sudden you have a lot of, you know,
0:02:10delightful but just sort of distracting family obligations
0:02:14and things such that, you know,
0:02:15I really sort of put it,
0:02:17so it's almost like I just took this app,
0:02:19threw it over a wall into the world,
0:02:21and then just like ran away for a couple days,
0:02:24which is not exactly what you want.
0:02:26And I did my best,
0:02:27like I checked into the support thing every now and then,
0:02:29and, you know, I hadn't,
0:02:31there were a few little initial bug fixes
0:02:34that you inevitably have.
0:02:36I was able to get those put together,
0:02:37and they're currently waiting in review.
0:02:40But then you just kind of fall off the map in a good way.
0:02:42And I think it's probably also good
0:02:44to start this discussion off by saying that taking breaks
0:02:47and having periods of time when you're not working
0:02:51is desirable, is a good thing.
0:02:54Like it's a bit of a problem
0:02:55that we're kind of looking at it from the perspective now
0:02:57of how do you deal with that when you come back to work?
0:03:00But there's certainly an advantage
0:03:02to having that separation,
0:03:04to take some time away,
0:03:05both in terms of your just mental health
0:03:08and overall wellbeing,
0:03:10and also probably just to build a little bit of perspective,
0:03:12to come back to things and be like,
0:03:14what do I actually want to work on?
0:03:15What was I doing before that I was just doing
0:03:18out of inertia rather than out of desire?
0:03:20But for me, yeah, now I'm back working again
0:03:24and kind of, it's especially weird for me right now
0:03:27'cause I'm coming back to edit
0:03:28after essentially skewing all work on my side project,
0:03:32on all my other apps except for Workouts++
0:03:35for the last two or three months.
0:03:37So I'd gotten all those apps into a pretty good state,
0:03:40roughly with the launch of iOS 10.
0:03:43Like I'd done a big update and then a bug fix update
0:03:47for most of my apps around iOS 10.
0:03:50They were all in a good place.
0:03:51Then I go from work on Workouts++ for a couple of months.
0:03:54And now I'm in a place where I have to look at all my work
0:03:57and say, like, what do I actually want to work on next?
0:04:01What should I work on next?
0:04:03And I do find it really awkward and like tricky
0:04:07when you end up kind of, it's the paradox of choice,
0:04:10I think it's called, or just being overwhelmed
0:04:13more and more simply, where you look at all of the universe
0:04:16of things that you could do and having to try
0:04:19and understand what the right thing to do.
0:04:22And especially when you have to deal with these weird
0:04:25tensions between like, what do I think is the best thing
0:04:28financially for my business for me to do?
0:04:30What thing would I enjoy most working on?
0:04:33What thing do I think my customers are most expecting?
0:04:36Where should I go in terms of what project
0:04:41do I think I would learn the most from?
0:04:42Like there's lots of different reasons.
0:04:43And I, like my first day back, which I think was on,
0:04:47I guess the day after New Year's Day,
0:04:49whatever that is, January 2nd, January 3rd,
0:04:52looking at, I just sat down and have like opened up
0:04:56Omnifocus for the first time in a long time.
0:04:58Because when I'm in a period where I'm working on an app
0:05:01like Workout Plus Plus, like pretty focused manner,
0:05:03if I come across any things in my other apps,
0:05:07or I get feature requests or things that sound good,
0:05:08I just kind of throw them all into there,
0:05:10which I think is a sane system to just kind of,
0:05:12rather than thinking about them and trying to manage them
0:05:14as you go, just postpone that until it's time.
0:05:19That meant that this week I've been having to sit down
0:05:22and be like, filter through just page after page
0:05:25of ideas, of thoughts, of things.
0:05:28And in general, I think my approach to this kind of thing
0:05:31is I just tend to latch on to one or two things
0:05:36that I think I can reasonably make progress with.
0:05:40And in some ways this kind of makes me think of,
0:05:43like I used to run track in high school
0:05:44and it's sort of like the warmup lab.
0:05:46It's the before you actually can start working properly,
0:05:49you have to go out and do a little bit of work,
0:05:53but not really hard work, just a little bit of something
0:05:55to get you back into the flow of things.
0:05:57And so, like today I've been working on a little,
0:06:00you know, it's like a minor feature in Pedometer Plus Plus
0:06:03that I think is useful and good,
0:06:05and isn't a particularly high stress or high risk feature,
0:06:09but it's something that I think would be useful.
0:06:10And I can kind of go through the process
0:06:12of working on something again,
0:06:14get, you know, sort of get back in the flow,
0:06:16and then once I finish this little,
0:06:18once I finish my warmup lab,
0:06:19I expect to then dive into some of the bigger features
0:06:22and some of the bigger tasks that I think are gonna take
0:06:26more of my mental energy, take more of my focus,
0:06:29and the kind of things that I don't really wanna do cold
0:06:32after spending a week or two with very little work.
0:06:36- One of the challenges I face in getting warmed up,
0:06:41you know, as you put it, the warmup lab is great.
0:06:43One of the big challenges I face is that
0:06:46when you've been away from a project for a while,
0:06:48whether that's just like, you know, a five day weekend
0:06:51and where your mind's totally somewhere else,
0:06:53or whether it's, you know, something like a big break
0:06:56where you're working on something else for a little while
0:06:58and you gotta like sideline something else,
0:07:00one of the big challenges I have is
0:07:03knowing where to even start,
0:07:04because this is the kind of problem where,
0:07:07like, you know, people like us who are indie developers
0:07:10who don't really work with other people,
0:07:11where basically the job of everything falls on us.
0:07:15It's very easy to get lazy with your organizational system
0:07:19about things like your to-do list,
0:07:22your, you know, tracking of what you have to do next,
0:07:25and also like documentation of things like your code
0:07:29and your app and what these things do,
0:07:31what these different parts do.
0:07:33It's very easy to fall into the trap of,
0:07:36well, it's all in my head as I'm working on it,
0:07:38and I can just remember these things,
0:07:40so I don't need to write this down.
0:07:41I don't need to document this code.
0:07:43I don't need to manage a to-do list
0:07:46because I know what I have to do, you know,
0:07:48and I am guilty of this worse than anybody else.
0:07:51Like, I hardly ever write anything down.
0:07:53I keep only a very basic to-do list in task paper
0:07:58of like, you know, things I want to do for this version,
0:08:01and like the entire, like, Overcast 3.0 to-do list
0:08:04is something like 20 lines long.
0:08:05It's not, this is not like a very granular thing to do
0:08:10most of the time,
0:08:11and you know, towards the end,
0:08:12I'll have like a bug puncture list basically
0:08:15that's a little more granular,
0:08:16but otherwise, you know, most of the time
0:08:18I'm working on something, I don't have anything like that.
0:08:19It's just kind of all in my head.
0:08:21So when I'm facing this problem,
0:08:22my biggest challenge is just like,
0:08:24I know what I have to do.
0:08:25I have to keep things more documented.
0:08:28I have to keep my to-dos more organized,
0:08:30but I don't usually do it,
0:08:32or I do it to a very half-hearted degree,
0:08:34and it's more of a challenge of personal discipline
0:08:37than anything else of just like,
0:08:39you know, when you're solo, it's so easy to not do things
0:08:44the way that you have to,
0:08:45like when you work in a job with other people,
0:08:48you kind of always have to be writing things down
0:08:50and coordinating to-dos and having a roadmap
0:08:53because it's kind of impossible to work with the people
0:08:55without having some degree of that,
0:08:57and there's also usually like a well-working place
0:09:00should usually be at least somewhat prepared
0:09:02for somebody leaving or quitting
0:09:04or getting fired at any time,
0:09:06and other people being able to pick up their work
0:09:09where they're left off,
0:09:10and when you're a solo developer like us,
0:09:12it's so easy to not have those kind of safeguards
0:09:15'cause you think you don't need them,
0:09:16but whenever you have to take any kind of break
0:09:19or juggle multiple projects,
0:09:20you really do need to think about
0:09:22those exact same strategies.
0:09:24- Yeah, I mean, and I actually was bit by exactly that
0:09:28the last day or so where,
0:09:30and this work that I've been doing on Podometer++,
0:09:32so I haven't worked on the app for probably since October,
0:09:35I think, so like two or three months,
0:09:36and I sit down and I start using it,
0:09:39and I notice something weird going on in my data system
0:09:42where a certain iOS API call
0:09:44wasn't returning the values that I expected it to,
0:09:47and so I started looking into this,
0:09:48and I was like, man, this is really weird.
0:09:51It's one of these weird edge case bugs
0:09:53where if I give a certain value to the HealthKit API,
0:09:57I get no data back,
0:09:58but if I do lots of other things, it works fine,
0:10:01which is a really weird bug.
0:10:02I'm like, man, this is strange,
0:10:04and I spend about a half a day working on this bug
0:10:06asking if I can find a workaround, if I can avoid it.
0:10:10In the end, I found no solution,
0:10:13and I was like, all right, well,
0:10:14I should probably file a radar about this
0:10:16just to make sure that Apple knows that this is a bug,
0:10:19and I open up bugreport.apple.com,
0:10:22go into my little account,
0:10:25and one of the top radars in there
0:10:27was me reporting this exact bug in August of last year,
0:10:31which I think I was reporting it against
0:10:34beta two or beta three in iOS 10.
0:10:37Clearly, I had completely forgotten
0:10:40that I had done this exact process before,
0:10:45which is a great example, though,
0:10:46of this I just wasted half a day
0:10:49trying to track this thing down that a few months ago,
0:10:51I did exactly the same thing,
0:10:53and I suppose it is such a tricky thing, though,
0:10:56to want to document in great detail
0:11:00all of the various these kinds of things
0:11:01because it is so easy to rely on your own memory,
0:11:04and I think in many ways, I find really,
0:11:07one of the core skills of development is memory,
0:11:12where I am at my most effective programming.
0:11:15The more of an application I can hold in my head at once,
0:11:20where I know where all the features are,
0:11:22I know how they all interconnect,
0:11:24and having that kind of loading all that information
0:11:27into my brain is where it gets really efficient and helpful,
0:11:30where I'm not constantly command-F-ing
0:11:33all over the whole project,
0:11:35trying to find the various things.
0:11:36I just know where they are,
0:11:38but if you take a few months off
0:11:41and you come back to a project,
0:11:42you can find yourself in these situations
0:11:44where you just forgot that you've solved this problem
0:11:47or you've gone through all of the work
0:11:49to determine that no solution exists,
0:11:52and in this case, it's like,
0:11:53what I really should have done
0:11:54when I solved this the first time,
0:11:55I ran into this problem the first time,
0:11:57is I should have just had a little comment in my code
0:11:59that said, "This API fails in this way.
0:12:03"Radar files, here's the radar number,"
0:12:06for my own reference, just so that,
0:12:08this morning, when I ran into this,
0:12:11I could thank past Dave for going back there,
0:12:15reporting this, short-circuiting this whole thing,
0:12:17and knowing that, okay, yeah, it's a bug, it's filed,
0:12:19Apple hasn't fixed it yet, but I can move on,
0:12:22and don't need to worry about it,
0:12:25or at least I already did worry about it.
0:12:27But that discipline about that is, I think,
0:12:29really hard, because, yeah, it doesn't feel like,
0:12:33I think it's really difficult to judge
0:12:35how far into the future you're going to need
0:12:39to know where you are.
0:12:41And on the flip side, obviously,
0:12:42you could take the other extreme
0:12:43and get really carried away,
0:12:45and be documenting everything,
0:12:46and all of your, everything is super detailed,
0:12:49and you end up in a proper, a formal software model,
0:12:52where you have the requirements,
0:12:53and then you have the development,
0:12:54and you have the testing documents,
0:12:56and you can go way overblown as well,
0:12:58but there is definitely something that experiences
0:13:02like I had today definitely reinforces for me,
0:13:04where like, I need to be a little bit more.
0:13:06And honestly, it's probably the kind of thing
0:13:08where just being like 10% more descriptive
0:13:12in my Git commits, in my comments,
0:13:15would have a disproportionate impact
0:13:17in my ability to come back to work,
0:13:19and to feel that I understand what's going on.
0:13:23- It's almost like a hierarchy of caches, you know?
0:13:26It's like, in programmer terminology,
0:13:28it's like, you know, we all know that,
0:13:30you know, as you said, like when you have
0:13:31a whole bunch of the program in your head,
0:13:33you are way more effective.
0:13:35That's what we refer to when we're talking
0:13:37about being in the zone as programmers.
0:13:39Like, it's basically having a whole bunch
0:13:41of the program in your head,
0:13:42which is like the highest level cache,
0:13:44like the L1 cache, or the registers.
0:13:46And then, as things like, you know,
0:13:49get evicted from either time or crowdedness,
0:13:53you have to start, you know, relying on other things
0:13:58to keep this stuff in your head,
0:14:00or to refer to other resources to get it back in your head.
0:14:05And, you know, a quick little comment in the code,
0:14:09or good documentation of like the architecture of the code,
0:14:13is way more effective at like,
0:14:16when you have a cache miss in your brain,
0:14:18and you have to go fetch it from this external resource,
0:14:20that's way faster than like having to repeat
0:14:24eight hours of coding only to make the same mistakes
0:14:26over and over again, only to discover
0:14:28the same eventual truth at the end
0:14:31that you could've discovered with, you know,
0:14:32a quick little comment in the code.
0:14:35- And it's, in many ways, it reminds me of some advice
0:14:37I remember hearing once about when you're like,
0:14:40writing little to-dos for yourself,
0:14:42like if you're capturing those kinds of thoughts,
0:14:44of the importance of capturing complete thoughts,
0:14:47not things that would just make sense at the time.
0:14:51You know, so like if I record a little to-do that says,
0:14:53you know, it's like table view height adjustment.
0:14:57Like, at that moment, I may know exactly what that means,
0:15:01and it sounds completely silly to be able to show you,
0:15:03you know, like fully expanded out,
0:15:05like table view height adjustment
0:15:07in stat screen of pedometer plus plus.
0:15:09Like, that, if I don't include all those other nouns,
0:15:14I'm gonna come back to that later and be like,
0:15:16what does this mean?
0:15:17Like, it becomes just complete gibberish and garbage,
0:15:19even though at the time,
0:15:20it feels like completely unnecessary,
0:15:22because I understand entirely the context.
0:15:25And so, I think in the same way,
0:15:27it's like when you're writing to-dos, it's important,
0:15:28and then, you know, similarly with, you know,
0:15:31in your code or your internal documentation,
0:15:34and I mean, obviously, we have the benefit, though,
0:15:35I will say, of we just have to write things
0:15:38that make sense to us, that we know ourselves better,
0:15:42that it's not like we're trying to write something
0:15:44that anybody with any level of sophistication
0:15:47or understanding would be of the project
0:15:49or of programming in general would be able to pick up.
0:15:51Like, we know ourselves, we know what, you know,
0:15:53like what short hands and what terms and things
0:15:57we can just use, but I think it's very important
0:15:59to have that kind of perspective of like,
0:16:01how can I be kind to my future self in my current self,
0:16:06rather than just assuming that my future self
0:16:08will like, kind of work it out?
0:16:09- Oh yeah, because like, especially like, you know,
0:16:11as the amount of time extends, you know,
0:16:14if you're writing something for your future self
0:16:16of four days from now, that's very different
0:16:19from your future self of four months from now,
0:16:21or four years from now.
0:16:23And as, like, I think it very quickly gets to a point
0:16:27that this is not like a slow progression.
0:16:29I think even after a few weeks or a few months
0:16:32of not working on something, you approach it
0:16:35almost as if a stranger would approach it.
0:16:37Like, your future self is way less familiar
0:16:42with what you're working on right now
0:16:44than your present self might realize.
0:16:46And if you can kind of get that into your head
0:16:48and internalize that and start remembering that
0:16:51as you're doing this kind of documentation
0:16:53or prep work or anything like that,
0:16:56you can really save your future self a lot of hassle
0:16:59because your future self is going to look
0:17:01at your current code and projects
0:17:04almost as if a stranger were looking at them.
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0:19:06- So I think it's also probably fair,
0:19:08now that we've kind of come back into our work,
0:19:11to discuss and work through a little bit of
0:19:13what makes sense to plan out for the first part of the year.
0:19:17'Cause we've talked about it before,
0:19:19where like iOS development has a schedule and a cadence
0:19:23kind of dictated to it somewhat externally,
0:19:25where, you know, starting around June 1st or so,
0:19:30you know, we get into the new stuff cycle,
0:19:32where from June until about September,
0:19:34we'll have new iOS betas, new devices,
0:19:37new whatevers that are gonna be announced.
0:19:41The fall is the kind of fallout from that period
0:19:44where we start to, you know,
0:19:47all these things actually go out into the wild,
0:19:48and we get to see how they get used in practice.
0:19:51And then we kind of get into this next phase,
0:19:53which I think is, in some ways,
0:19:55my most enjoyable part of the cycle,
0:19:57where, you know, from roughly now,
0:19:59you know, we've gotten through Christmas and New Year's.
0:20:03So from now until June, we have about six months
0:20:05to just work on whatever we want in a lot of ways.
0:20:09And I tend to like this time of year for polishing,
0:20:14doing a lot of like 0.1, 0.2 releases,
0:20:17working on a lot of things that, you know,
0:20:20didn't make sense to try and squeeze in
0:20:23with a major iOS update, things like that,
0:20:27where I can sit down and I can spend, you know,
0:20:30a significant amount of time
0:20:31without quite the same time pressure as I would
0:20:34if I was doing it over the summer or in the fall,
0:20:37you know, where now I can kind of,
0:20:38if it ends up taking an extra couple weeks, it's fine.
0:20:41There's no external constraints
0:20:43or things that I'm trying to fight around.
0:20:46And so I tend to look at it,
0:20:47and that's kind of like what my planning right now
0:20:49for all of my apps, you know, it's like,
0:20:50essentially, I'm just gonna be sitting there
0:20:52making out these kind of big point releases for all my apps.
0:20:56You know, I have taken these kind of nice features
0:20:58that I think are value adds.
0:21:00And honestly, even a lot of what ends up happening with me
0:21:03is I, as I have so many apps,
0:21:05but they're all kind of related, you know,
0:21:07all my plus plus apps are health and fitness oriented.
0:21:11And so what I've started to do too is
0:21:13I'll end up doing something in one of them
0:21:15that I feel like will make sense
0:21:17to kind of incorporate back into the other ones.
0:21:20And so I expect to be doing a lot of that this,
0:21:23sort of, I guess, what we're gonna call this period,
0:21:25like in the new year slash through the spring,
0:21:29where I can go through and kind of just get everything
0:21:31in a nice, solid, robust, kind of like making
0:21:35these features a little bit deeper.
0:21:37Like, maybe that's a good way to think of it too.
0:21:39Like in the summer and fall, I tend to think of it
0:21:42as kind of widening the apps,
0:21:44making them incorporate these new features,
0:21:47incorporating these new platforms, whatever makes sense.
0:21:50And then, you know, sort of the first half of the year
0:21:52is more about taking those things
0:21:54and kind of digging them deeper
0:21:55and adding all those little touches
0:21:58that make the app richer that you didn't quite,
0:22:01didn't quite have time to do in the first place.
0:22:06- Yeah, because you know, the fall is,
0:22:07we spend so much of the fall, just,
0:22:09and the summer even, just like adapting new things,
0:22:13or adopting new things,
0:22:14and keeping up with all of Apple's new stuff.
0:22:16And you know, from January through June,
0:22:19Apple's pretty quiet usually.
0:22:20And so, yeah, it's a great time,
0:22:23as you said, to work on quality,
0:22:26to broaden your feature base.
0:22:28I would say it's a great time to address things
0:22:30like user requests, like feature requests
0:22:33from people that are very common.
0:22:34'Cause you don't have anything else,
0:22:36for the most part, competing with this time.
0:22:39Most of the rest of the year,
0:22:40you have like external pressure
0:22:42of things you need to be keeping up with
0:22:44or doing or planning for right now.
0:22:46This part of the year is basically like,
0:22:48work on the core, make the app better,
0:22:50make your stuff better, try, you know,
0:22:52if you wanna start experimenting with brand new features
0:22:56or start planning what your next big release might be,
0:22:59this is a good time for that.
0:23:00Of course, I'm following none of this advice myself.
0:23:02I'm actually preparing to launch my 3.0 now.
0:23:06But that's not because it was planned this way,
0:23:07it's because it took too long.
0:23:09I wanted to launch it in the fall and I just didn't.
0:23:11But, you know, this is,
0:23:14and honestly, this is not a bad time to release a big point,
0:23:16you know, a big point 0 update.
0:23:18Because there's not a lot else going on.
0:23:22And there is some concern there that, you know,
0:23:25you need to be aware of things like the PR seasons
0:23:29and calendar and advertising and everything like that.
0:23:32One of the good things is that, well,
0:23:35a good thing if you're looking to buy ads
0:23:39or, you know, things like App Store search ads,
0:23:41you know, or ads on people's podcasts
0:23:43or ads on websites or whatever else, Facebook ads,
0:23:45usually ad inventory is pretty low
0:23:49in January and February.
0:23:51And this is a terrible thing if you make your money via ads,
0:23:55as you taught me and you were right,
0:23:58that basically your ad revenue tends to drop pretty sharply
0:24:01in the first few days of January
0:24:03compared to the year before and, you know,
0:24:05compared to the week before, even like in December.
0:24:08And sometimes it takes big corporate ad budgets
0:24:12a little while to get organized
0:24:13and start buying things for the new year.
0:24:15And so if you are an indie, making money via ads,
0:24:19you know, I think it's important not to freak out
0:24:20too much about that 'cause it's temporary.
0:24:22And if you are buying ads,
0:24:24this is kind of an awesome time to buy ads if you're an indie
0:24:27'cause you don't have to work on the annual corporate budget
0:24:29and get approval from a bunch of different departments.
0:24:31You can just buy the ads right now.
0:24:33And so you actually might be able to get
0:24:35a pretty good deal on ad inventory
0:24:37where things are a little bit cheaper
0:24:38than they normally would be.
0:24:40So that's also worth considering.
0:24:41But for the most part, I think you mainly have to
0:24:45be aware of like, you know, not releasing things
0:24:48too close to a holiday or a slow time or a slow weekend.
0:24:52But I think we're mostly past that now.
0:24:53You know, as we talk about this, it's January 4th,
0:24:57probably coming out on the 5th.
0:24:58So, you know, we're past New Year's Day
0:25:00and like the day or two after.
0:25:02I think pretty much any time now, from now forward,
0:25:04is okay to release things without too much trouble.
0:25:07- Yeah, and it's just a good, like, in some ways,
0:25:11it's just a good time to get back to work,
0:25:15like in a good way.
0:25:15Like I always find that the fall just feels
0:25:19just so disjointed for me.
0:25:22Like it's really hard to really get stuck into things
0:25:25'cause there's just so many things going on externally,
0:25:28both professionally as well as personally,
0:25:30that I kind of like the thought of like,
0:25:34nothing's really gonna happen for the next couple of months.
0:25:37And so getting into a normal rhythm,
0:25:39getting into a, you know, kind of starting some new habits,
0:25:42not necessarily like in the like,
0:25:43have New Year's resolutions perspective,
0:25:45but just by benefit of there not being things
0:25:48that are gonna be messing with your schedule,
0:25:50you know, it's kind of a nice time to be able to look at that
0:25:54and to hopefully, you know, like I really enjoy this process
0:25:57of sitting down and being like, what do I wanna work on?
0:26:00You know, what is actually going to be
0:26:02an interesting thing to build?
0:26:04What's, you know, what would I enjoy in that?
0:26:07And so it's a good time to be thoughtful about that
0:26:10and to kind of think that, you know,
0:26:11what is something that's maybe like,
0:26:13the level of difficulty might be a little higher,
0:26:16you know, 'cause this is a good time too,
0:26:17maybe to try and fail.
0:26:19You know, you try something that's a bit risky
0:26:20that might not work out.
0:26:22Like it's a better time to do that now
0:26:24than, you know, maybe later in the year
0:26:27or when things are a bit more high pressure.
0:26:30You know, like I've, I think it was like two or three
0:26:33Christmases ago, back when the Christmas bump
0:26:36was just dramatic.
0:26:37Like I remember the early days of the App Store,
0:26:40I would, you know, the Christmas day
0:26:42and the day after Christmas were something like 8% or 10%
0:26:45of my yearly revenue.
0:26:46Like it was huge and dramatic.
0:26:48- Oh yeah.
0:26:49- Thankfully that's kind of settled down a bit.
0:26:51Like as cool as it was to make that much money,
0:26:53like it was a bit terrifying.
0:26:54'Cause I remember a couple years ago,
0:26:56I had a bug in my main app that I released
0:27:01like, I think it was about five, six days before Christmas.
0:27:05I released it and it turned out the bug,
0:27:08like the app worked completely fine,
0:27:10except for all of the in-app purchases didn't work.
0:27:14(laughing)
0:27:15- It worked fine, so I couldn't make any money.
0:27:17- Exactly.
0:27:18So that was a bit terrifying.
0:27:19And I, you know, did the bug,
0:27:21it was one of these like trivial things
0:27:23that there's a bit of debug logic that I had to flip over.
0:27:25And then, you know, resubmitted to Apple,
0:27:27did the expedited request.
0:27:29And in the end it was fine.
0:27:32Like the app was, you know, working in a functional way
0:27:34on Christmas day, which was super important.
0:27:37But I love that we're sort of past some of these things
0:27:41where you have that high stakes, that high stress,
0:27:43that if that app had been broken on Christmas day,
0:27:45it would have had a dramatic impact.
0:27:47And so I love this kind of time of the year
0:27:50where if something gets busted, if something gets broken,
0:27:53like the stakes are much lower.
0:27:54Like it's still impactful.
0:27:56It's not like I said, I wanna just be cavalier about things.
0:27:58But it's nice to kind of have that pressure
0:28:00taken off a little bit, and to be able to kind of
0:28:02really dive into some bigger projects in that way.
0:28:06- Oh yeah, I mean, and what you said earlier,
0:28:08I mean, like about how this is such a great work time,
0:28:10'cause like there's no interruptions.
0:28:12Like I love this time of year.
0:28:13I mean, I hate winter in general,
0:28:15'cause I can't go outside, because the outside world
0:28:17just hates me, but I'm a huge fan of the amount of work
0:28:21I can get done during this time.
0:28:23Because yeah, there's no holidays, there's no,
0:28:25well there's very few holidays,
0:28:27there's no like family needs really.
0:28:29It's just a solid like couple of months really
0:28:32where there's nothing else to do but work.
0:28:35And I kinda like it.
0:28:37So anyway, thank you everybody for listening.
0:28:39Good luck getting back to work yourselves.
0:28:41And we'll talk to you next week.
0:28:43- Bye.
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