Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello and welcome to Developing Perspective.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing news of note in iOS development, Apple, and the like.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith. I'm an independent iOS and Mac developer based in Herne, Virginia.

00:00:13 ◼   ► This is show number 100, and today is Wednesday, December 12th.

00:00:17 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Like I just said, this is episode 100 of Developing Perspective,

00:00:25 ◼   ► which is certainly an opportunity to take advantage of the kind of odd thing that people love to do,

00:00:29 ◼   ► do where we latch onto nice big round numbers and give them extra weight and extra value

00:00:34 ◼   ► because they're nice, big, and round.

00:00:37 ◼   ► And so basically, yeah, I've been doing Developing Perspective for quite a while now, and it's

00:00:41 ◼   ► kind of exciting to actually get to episode 100.

00:00:44 ◼   ► I think I started with a few beta episodes and I've done a couple of interviews, so I've

00:00:48 ◼   ► done more than 100.

00:00:49 ◼   ► But this is certainly episode 100 of the main episodes that I do, and it's kind of exciting

00:00:55 ◼   ► to arrive there.

00:00:56 ◼   ► and to at this point to have an audience,

00:00:58 ◼   ► to be the people who are listening to this right now,

00:01:00 ◼   ► to hear hopefully the experiences I've shared

00:01:03 ◼   ► and the things I've learned from being an independent iOS developer.

00:01:06 ◼   ► It's kind of exciting.

00:01:08 ◼   ► I don't know where this is going to go.

00:01:10 ◼   ► I don't know how long I'll be doing the show,

00:01:12 ◼   ► but at least for a while this has been something that's kind of cool,

00:01:15 ◼   ► and it's nice to hit a big milestone and see what it took to get here.

00:01:19 ◼   ► So for today, what I'm going to talk about is,

00:01:24 ◼   ► I guess, I think the title of this episode is probably going to end up being "Showing

00:01:28 ◼   ► Up."

00:01:29 ◼   ► I make up titles at the end of the shows just kind of based on my gut, based on, you know,

00:01:33 ◼   ► so I just talked for 15 minutes and see kind of what sticks.

00:01:36 ◼   ► You know, there's no complicated other methodology.

00:01:39 ◼   ► It's not like a 5x5 show with this whole system and voting and thing.

00:01:43 ◼   ► I'm just thinking about it as I go, and my guess is sometimes ahead of the time I know

00:01:47 ◼   ► what I'm going to do, I think this one's just going to be "Showing Up."

00:01:50 ◼   ► And I think about that because it is episode 100,

00:01:53 ◼   ► and it's an interesting opportunity to kind of think about that,

00:01:56 ◼   ► and to think about how do you get to a place like this?

00:02:00 ◼   ► What are the steps that it takes?

00:02:02 ◼   ► And this applies to anything. It applies to apps.

00:02:05 ◼   ► I'll probably be using a lot of app examples just because that's what I do.

00:02:08 ◼   ► But you think about it as recently and often,

00:02:12 ◼   ► there's all these articles that tend to get sent around or get written about,

00:02:17 ◼   ► I think there's a recent one titled,

00:02:20 ◼   ► "Is this the end of the indie app developer?"

00:02:24 ◼   ► There's a couple about looking at the success of Fantastic

00:02:28 ◼   ► Hal and Letterpress and talking about,

00:02:30 ◼   ► is that a pattern that you could repeat?

00:02:33 ◼   ► Or are those the outliers?

00:02:36 ◼   ► And the thing is, whenever I see all of these things,

00:02:39 ◼   ► it creates this funny set of expectations that it kind of

00:02:43 ◼   ► It comes from a place that your goal in creating something

00:02:47 ◼   ► is for it to be wildly successful.

00:02:50 ◼   ► Broadly speaking, I would say if that's your goal,

00:02:54 ◼   ► if you're developing something for the purpose

00:02:58 ◼   ► of it being wildly successful,

00:03:00 ◼   ► you're almost certainly going to fail.

00:03:02 ◼   ► I don't say that to be harsh or to be unkind,

00:03:05 ◼   ► but in my experience, and this is kind of the flow

00:03:07 ◼   ► that I've walked through as I've been an app developer,

00:03:10 ◼   ► as I've gone through this process.

00:03:12 ◼   ► I remember when I was first starting out,

00:03:14 ◼   ► I was always all focused on the money.

00:03:18 ◼   ► I was focused on can I make enough revenue,

00:03:19 ◼   ► can I make enough revenue, it's the business side of it.

00:03:23 ◼   ► And what I found very quickly is that

00:03:26 ◼   ► money is a terrible motivator, at least for me,

00:03:30 ◼   ► mostly because it's nice that it's countable,

00:03:34 ◼   ► it's nice that it's measurable,

00:03:35 ◼   ► it's nice that it's something that you can kind of

00:03:37 ◼   ► wrap your head around, but ultimately,

00:03:39 ◼   ► Money is something that you'll never have enough of, probably, and you'll never be content

00:03:44 ◼   ► with how much you have.

00:03:46 ◼   ► I mean, struggling with contentment is a whole life, broader life question.

00:03:51 ◼   ► But broadly speaking, I've never known anybody who was kind of like, "You know, I make enough

00:03:55 ◼   ► money.

00:03:56 ◼   ► I'm good with where I am."

00:03:58 ◼   ► Very few people kind of have that mindset, and I think especially the entrepreneurial

00:04:02 ◼   ► type of person is very rarely going to fall there.

00:04:05 ◼   ► I mean, I think there was a great--

00:04:06 ◼   ► I think it was Larry Ellison.

00:04:07 ◼   ► And it's like, how much money do you want to make?

00:04:11 ◼   ► And he was talking about it's like, well,

00:04:12 ◼   ► I just want to make at least one more dollar.

00:04:14 ◼   ► It's like, you have that mindset.

00:04:15 ◼   ► It's like, no matter how much money you have,

00:04:16 ◼   ► you have billions of dollars.

00:04:18 ◼   ► If you're a kind of person who has an entrepreneurial spirit,

00:04:20 ◼   ► you're probably always going to be wanting

00:04:21 ◼   ► to be seeking out that next thing, the big next thing.

00:04:25 ◼   ► And so money then becomes a terrible motivator

00:04:28 ◼   ► because you'll never get there.

00:04:31 ◼   ► And as soon as you--

00:04:32 ◼   ► if your goal and your thing that you're reaching for is something

00:04:34 ◼   ► you'll never achieve, you'll kind of fall flat.

00:04:39 ◼   ► It gets very depressing very quickly,

00:04:41 ◼   ► or it just kind of loses its edge.

00:04:44 ◼   ► And so then for me, after I kind of came to grips with that

00:04:47 ◼   ► and stopped focusing so much on the money,

00:04:48 ◼   ► I started focusing a little bit on the,

00:04:52 ◼   ► I guess you could call it popularity.

00:04:54 ◼   ► And this gets into, you know,

00:04:56 ◼   ► how many total downloads can I get?

00:04:59 ◼   ► How many followers do I have on Twitter?

00:05:00 ◼   ► How many people listen to my podcast?

00:05:02 ◼   ► You know, these kind of things that are also measurable.

00:05:04 ◼   ► maybe it's just my gut, I'm a bit of a spreadsheet nerd,

00:05:09 ◼   ► but I love thinking about and talking about things

00:05:12 ◼   ► that I can measure, and so I started to kind of

00:05:15 ◼   ► focusing on that, and that's great, and that's interesting,

00:05:17 ◼   ► but the problem is ultimately,

00:05:20 ◼   ► you end up building things for the wrong reasons.

00:05:23 ◼   ► It's very, the things that you would do to build an app

00:05:27 ◼   ► that, if your primary goal is volume,

00:05:31 ◼   ► if you're trying to get in front of as many people as possible,

00:05:36 ◼   ► you know, kind of, which is essentially how popular can you get,

00:05:38 ◼   ► you'll end up chasing things that are probably not worthwhile,

00:05:41 ◼   ► and worthwhile in a very subjective way,

00:05:45 ◼   ► but worthwhile, you know, not worthwhile, nevertheless.

00:05:47 ◼   ► You know, you think of, you know, just go to the top list in the store,

00:05:50 ◼   ► and you'll see a lot of junk.

00:05:55 ◼   ► You'll see a lot of things that are catering to people's sort of base instincts,

00:05:56 ◼   ► that are catering to, you know,

00:05:58 ◼   ► sometimes taking advantage of people,

00:06:02 ◼   ► sometimes you may have misleading people.

00:06:04 ◼   ► There's all kinds of things that you can do

00:06:06 ◼   ► if you're just trying to do volume

00:06:07 ◼   ► that really, at the end of the day,

00:06:09 ◼   ► make you not necessarily the person you would want to be.

00:06:12 ◼   ► And, you know, this is, being from my experience,

00:06:13 ◼   ► and these are all sort of value judgments,

00:06:15 ◼   ► but, you know, in my experience,

00:06:17 ◼   ► that's not a great thing to be pursuant.

00:06:19 ◼   ► I mean, it's sort of, you know, and similarly in anything,

00:06:21 ◼   ► like, being popular means you're optimizing for popularity.

00:06:25 ◼   ► I don't know if as an engineer that's something that I want to be optimizing for.

00:06:30 ◼   ► There's hopefully other things that I'll talk about later that are better.

00:06:33 ◼   ► And so the next phase that I went into and the next thing I started talking about,

00:06:36 ◼   ► I'm thinking about was,

00:06:40 ◼   ► maybe instead of optimizing for popularity, I want to optimize for respect.

00:06:44 ◼   ► I had to find success for myself as being a respected member of the community.

00:06:48 ◼   ► And this started to get a lot closer to something that was motivating, something that was interesting.

00:06:52 ◼   ► I think of the now famous talk at South by Southwest

00:06:57 ◼   ► with Merleman and John Gruber,

00:07:01 ◼   ► where they were talking about keeping an ideal

00:07:04 ◼   ► sort of audience in mind when you're creating something

00:07:08 ◼   ► that you want to have in your mind,

00:07:10 ◼   ► a picture of who it is that you're trying to impress,

00:07:12 ◼   ► who it is that you're trying to reach out to

00:07:14 ◼   ► and kind of grab onto.

00:07:17 ◼   ► And that was much, for a long time,

00:07:20 ◼   ► that was much, much, much more helpful

00:07:19 ◼   ► was to be thinking in those ways. I'm trying to write an app that the designers I admire

00:07:23 ◼   ► would think is good and nice looking. The developers I admire would think

00:07:27 ◼   ► is well built. That the reporters and authors

00:07:31 ◼   ► I would like would think is worth reviewing. Those types of things.

00:07:35 ◼   ► And again, you get, having that externality of

00:07:39 ◼   ► quality is certainly helpful, especially as you're trying to define and navigate your own tastes.

00:07:44 ◼   ► That got me pretty close, and for a lot of people,

00:07:46 ◼   ► I'd say that's a good place to start,

00:07:48 ◼   ► of trying to define success for yourself as,

00:07:52 ◼   ► what does it look like, who are you trying to impress?

00:07:57 ◼   ► Who would you love to say, wow, this is a cool thing?

00:08:01 ◼   ► Is that, are you going after a certain celebrity

00:08:05 ◼   ► or certain sports figure, whatever?

00:08:08 ◼   ► Is it a technical author, is it a blogger?

00:08:12 ◼   ► You say like, oh man, I'd love to be written up on these sites.

00:08:16 ◼   ► I'd love to have so and so know that so and so uses my app.

00:08:20 ◼   ► Those are cool things.

00:08:22 ◼   ► But ultimately, what I found struggling with that is that's also very difficult

00:08:25 ◼   ► because it's an external thing.

00:08:28 ◼   ► And you're starting to chase-- you kind of end up chasing your tail

00:08:31 ◼   ► because you're not that person.

00:08:33 ◼   ► You don't know what they like.

00:08:34 ◼   ► You can kind of infer it maybe from other things.

00:08:37 ◼   ► But the reality is you have to feel internally

00:08:41 ◼   ► that what you're doing is worthwhile, that you have to think what you're doing is excellent.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And it's perhaps a trite thing to say, but

00:08:48 ◼   ► in the end of the day you need to be optimizing, I think,

00:08:51 ◼   ► for whatever you think is quality.

00:08:53 ◼   ► And for me, if I had to characterize what I would say success is at this point,

00:08:58 ◼   ► is being able on a daily basis to make things that I'm proud of.

00:09:03 ◼   ► And

00:09:05 ◼   ► that applies to all kinds of things. That applies to the apps I make, that applies to the shows I do,

00:09:09 ◼   ► that applies to the things I write.

00:09:11 ◼   ► Across the board, that's success.

00:09:14 ◼   ► It's not really, it's not how much money I make,

00:09:15 ◼   ► it's not how many people think I'm cool,

00:09:18 ◼   ► what my popularity is, by whatever measure.

00:09:21 ◼   ► It's not how many people respect the work I do.

00:09:23 ◼   ► Those are all nice things.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Those are all perhaps essential things,

00:09:26 ◼   ► especially money, in terms of for me to continue.

00:09:29 ◼   ► But success is, can I continue on a day-to-day basis

00:09:33 ◼   ► in creating things that I'm proud of?

00:09:35 ◼   ► And when I look at my portfolio,

00:09:36 ◼   ► especially the work I've done recently,

00:09:38 ◼   ► That's been my goal and that's what I'm striving towards.

00:09:42 ◼   ► And that's what helps me to show up every day.

00:09:45 ◼   ► That's what, when I'm getting frustrated,

00:09:48 ◼   ► it's, am I proud of this?

00:09:49 ◼   ► No, well then I probably shouldn't ship it.

00:09:51 ◼   ► Then I probably should work harder on it.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Then I should probably make something better.

00:09:56 ◼   ► And it's helped me to avoid a lot of traps.

00:09:59 ◼   ► It's helped me to make better choices

00:10:03 ◼   ► to kind of have that as my mindset

00:10:05 ◼   ► and to be what I'm kind of working towards.

00:10:07 ◼   ► I say that on the show, on episode 100 specifically, because I know a lot of people who get stuck

00:10:14 ◼   ► in one of the earlier categories, where they start beating themselves up on, "They make

00:10:22 ◼   ► an app and it doesn't sell well. It doesn't make enough money." Or they are doing something

00:10:27 ◼   ► and they think it's really cool, but no one else does. Or they build something trying

00:10:36 ◼   ► to impress other people rather than trying to impress themselves, the negative forms

00:10:42 ◼   ► of those first three traits.

00:10:44 ◼   ► And they end up, as a result, not doing things anymore, that they get discouraged, that they

00:10:49 ◼   ► stop working on things.

00:10:51 ◼   ► And that's far more of a tragedy.

00:10:52 ◼   ► What I love are the people who make things that they think are cool, that they're proud

00:10:58 ◼   ► of, and that when they, like someone who shows me an app that they've built, that they're

00:11:03 ◼   ► proud of, you can kind of tell when they show it to you.

00:11:05 ◼   ► and they're like, "Hey man, check this out.

00:11:06 ◼   ► "Look what I did."

00:11:08 ◼   ► And it's like, even if that's something

00:11:09 ◼   ► that I would never use, or whatever,

00:11:12 ◼   ► I don't think there's a market for it.

00:11:13 ◼   ► There's lots of other things that go into it.

00:11:15 ◼   ► But it's a success if they think

00:11:17 ◼   ► that that was worth building.

00:11:19 ◼   ► And that's kind of where you start.

00:11:22 ◼   ► And I've had some people talk to me

00:11:23 ◼   ► about developing a perspective.

00:11:24 ◼   ► This show, what you're listening to now,

00:11:27 ◼   ► how it got to where it is, and all these things,

00:11:29 ◼   ► like if I had any insights or thoughts

00:11:31 ◼   ► of that for other people.

00:11:33 ◼   ► And the reality is, for a long time,

00:11:35 ◼   ► and to some degree now,

00:11:38 ◼   ► I'm just a guy sitting in a closet,

00:11:40 ◼   ► reading, sort of talking into a microphone.

00:11:42 ◼   ► There's no one outside necessarily validating that.

00:11:45 ◼   ► You know, I can look at the download numbers, I guess,

00:11:47 ◼   ► and see how many people are doing it,

00:11:48 ◼   ► and it's nice to hear from people when they say,

00:11:50 ◼   ► hey, it's great, I really appreciate it,

00:11:52 ◼   ► you helped me, you motivated me, something like that.

00:11:55 ◼   ► But you have to be comfortable just doing it.

00:11:58 ◼   ► If it is just you in a room making something,

00:12:00 ◼   ► you have to think that that thing is worth making,

00:12:02 ◼   ► without those other parts, because otherwise

00:12:06 ◼   ► you're going to get very discouraged very quickly.

00:12:09 ◼   ► That's just the experience I had.

00:12:10 ◼   ► When I was chasing after money as a goal,

00:12:14 ◼   ► it's like, "Oh, great, I made it more than I did

00:12:18 ◼   ► "the month before, that's great.

00:12:21 ◼   ► "I guess I need to do that again and again and again."

00:12:24 ◼   ► You're chasing your tail again.

00:12:25 ◼   ► If I want to be more and more popular,

00:12:27 ◼   ► it's like I start optimizing for the lowest

00:12:28 ◼   ► common denominator and that's kind of lame.

00:12:31 ◼   ► Or if I start, you know, caring too much

00:12:33 ◼   ► about what other people think about me,

00:12:35 ◼   ► then I start straying from things that I think are important

00:12:38 ◼   ► and start, you know, creating my value from other people,

00:12:42 ◼   ► which is probably not a wise thing to do.

00:12:45 ◼   ► So anyway, that's kind of the thought I have.

00:12:47 ◼   ► It's probably a bit hand-wavy and a little less practical.

00:12:49 ◼   ► Maybe I'll get back to my practical series next week

00:12:52 ◼   ► or in our next show, but I just kind of wanted

00:12:54 ◼   ► to think about it.

00:12:55 ◼   ► It's something I've been thinking about kind of

00:12:56 ◼   ► as I hit a milestone of saying, you know,

00:12:58 ◼   ► "How did I get here?"

00:13:00 ◼   ► reality is I just kept sitting down in front of a microphone and talking.

00:13:06 ◼   ► The whole time I was concerned and worried about how do I make what I'm doing better,

00:13:10 ◼   ► how do I improve the quality of it, how do I make myself more and more proud of what

00:13:14 ◼   ► I'm doing.

00:13:15 ◼   ► I think if you do that or apply that to almost anything, you'll be in a good shape.

00:13:18 ◼   ► You'll be constantly making better and better things.

00:13:21 ◼   ► You'll constantly be motivated to keep making good things.

00:13:24 ◼   ► You'll be able to kill your darlings more easily because you'll look at something and

00:13:27 ◼   ► and say, I don't care if other people will like it,

00:13:31 ◼   ► I don't care if it'll make me money,

00:13:32 ◼   ► I don't care if it will gain me respect to some degree.

00:13:36 ◼   ► What I want is for me to be proud of what I'm doing,

00:13:39 ◼   ► and if I'm doing something I'm not particularly proud of,

00:13:41 ◼   ► maybe that's not what I should be doing.

00:13:43 ◼   ► Anyways, that's today's show.

00:13:45 ◼   ► As always, if you have questions, comments,

00:13:46 ◼   ► concerns or complaints, I'm on Twitter @_davidsmith,

00:13:50 ◼   ► and I'm on AppNet @davidsmith.

00:13:52 ◼   ► And I just wanted to mention,

00:13:54 ◼   ► and it's probably worth doing,

00:13:56 ◼   ► But I have a bunch of people who ask about,

00:13:59 ◼   ► sort of, oh, do you do sponsorships,

00:14:01 ◼   ► do you do all those kinds of things?

00:14:03 ◼   ► And the reality is I don't.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And at this point, I don't really necessarily expect to

00:14:06 ◼   ► at any point in the future.

00:14:08 ◼   ► Who knows, but how do I support this?

00:14:10 ◼   ► It's like, how do I support the show?

00:14:12 ◼   ► If you had a sponsor, it's like I could buy their product

00:14:14 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:14:15 ◼   ► And the reality is, if you're a listener

00:14:17 ◼   ► and you find the show useful and you like it,

00:14:19 ◼   ► the best thing you can do if you want to support it

00:14:21 ◼   ► is to tell someone who doesn't know about it about it.

00:14:26 ◼   ► talk to a friend, talk to a colleague,

00:14:28 ◼   ► mention it on Twitter, doing those kinds of things

00:14:30 ◼   ► to hopefully help the content of it

00:14:33 ◼   ► reach a broader audience.

00:14:35 ◼   ► That's the number one thing you can do

00:14:36 ◼   ► if you wanted to support the show

00:14:38 ◼   ► is just to tell someone who you think could benefit from it.

00:14:42 ◼   ► But otherwise, that's it for the show,

00:14:44 ◼   ► and I will talk to you later.

00:14:46 ◼   ► Happy coding, bye.