Developing Perspective

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

00:00:03 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a podcast discussing news of note in iOS development, Apple, and

00:00:07 ◼   ► the like.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith.

00:00:09 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS and Mac developer based in Herndon, Virginia.

00:00:11 ◼   ► This is show number 76, and today is Tuesday, September 4th.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is never longer than 15 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:19 ◼   ► All right, so this is kind of a—see, a lot of the shows that I do on Developing Perspective

00:00:24 ◼   ► are about development, are about the process of building things, are about the process

00:00:30 ◼   ► of marketing and selling things, are about the business of being an iOS or a Mac developer,

00:00:35 ◼   ► being an independent.

00:00:36 ◼   ► These are the kind of things I talk a lot about.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Today I'm going to take a slightly different tack.

00:00:40 ◼   ► And if you're familiar with the 5x5 network, it's kind of like, this is more of a back-to-work

00:00:46 ◼   ► topic than maybe what I usually do here.

00:00:50 ◼   ► And it's very anecdotal.

00:00:51 ◼   ► It's very personal to me.

00:00:52 ◼   ► It's just kind of an experience I had that I wanted to share

00:00:55 ◼   ► because I think it might be instructive,

00:00:57 ◼   ► and I think it's helpful to talk about in that way.

00:01:00 ◼   ► So basically yesterday,

00:01:02 ◼   ► it was last Wednesday, so about a week ago,

00:01:06 ◼   ► I was getting ready to head out to the office,

00:01:10 ◼   ► at least a little bit of office space,

00:01:13 ◼   ► a little bit away from my house,

00:01:14 ◼   ► so I can get away from the kids and focus on my work.

00:01:17 ◼   ► And for various reasons, it would have been great

00:01:20 ◼   ► I could bike to work rather than ride a car because the car seat situation with my kids

00:01:24 ◼   ► or you know, that is completely beside the point.

00:01:28 ◼   ► But I needed to work out, oh, well, I need to check the weather to see if I can, to see

00:01:35 ◼   ► if it makes sense for me to bike to work and so on.

00:01:38 ◼   ► And I was sitting there playing with my phone trying to work that out.

00:01:41 ◼   ► And it was driving me nuts because I can look on dark sky and see that there's no rain for

00:01:45 ◼   ► the next hour, but that's only helpful for me getting to the office, it's not only getting

00:01:49 ◼   ► and it was just reinforcing this constant nag

00:01:54 ◼   ► that I've had for years about, "Oh, man.

00:01:58 ◼   ► I wish there was a weather app that worked

00:02:01 ◼   ► the way that I want weather."

00:02:03 ◼   ► I'm sure my needs are not the needs of many other people

00:02:06 ◼   ► or a large percentage of people,

00:02:09 ◼   ► but this is the way that I want weather.

00:02:11 ◼   ► And the app really fits that need.

00:02:14 ◼   ► I have two or three different things

00:02:16 ◼   ► that I go to pull different information.

00:02:15 ◼   ► A lot of times I even end up on people's like,

00:02:17 ◼   ► you know, weather.com or weather underground's websites

00:02:19 ◼   ► because that's sometimes better.

00:02:21 ◼   ► And it's just driving me crazy.

00:02:22 ◼   ► And I was like, you know what?

00:02:24 ◼   ► I'm going to write my weather app.

00:02:26 ◼   ► I'm just going to sit down and I'm going to write it.

00:02:28 ◼   ► Like, I don't really, it may not have been the best time

00:02:31 ◼   ► for me business-wise or personally

00:02:33 ◼   ► in terms of like where I am with other apps and things,

00:02:35 ◼   ► but like, you know what?

00:02:36 ◼   ► I just want to do that because it's been driving me crazy

00:02:39 ◼   ► for such a long time.

00:02:41 ◼   ► And so that's what I've been doing.

00:02:42 ◼   ► And the reason I'm bringing this up

00:02:44 ◼   ► is because it has been remarkable how different my focus,

00:02:48 ◼   ► my attention, my excitement, my passion for what I'm doing

00:02:53 ◼   ► has been from Tuesday versus Thursday of last week,

00:02:58 ◼   ► and even continuing through until today.

00:03:01 ◼   ► I am working on something that I'm excited about,

00:03:04 ◼   ► that I think is useful, that I have a lot of opinions about,

00:03:06 ◼   ► that I'm really getting in there

00:03:09 ◼   ► and working with these problems,

00:03:10 ◼   ► because they're problems that I have,

00:03:12 ◼   ► and I'm solving them, scratching my own itch,

00:03:13 ◼   ► and really working on something that I want.

00:03:17 ◼   ► I really want this to work.

00:03:18 ◼   ► And I mean, it's crazy how dramatic a difference that is

00:03:21 ◼   ► in terms of productivity.

00:03:23 ◼   ► I think I tweeted about this,

00:03:26 ◼   ► but it was this fascinating thing of,

00:03:29 ◼   ► anytime in the future when I'm complaining

00:03:30 ◼   ► about my procrastinating on something,

00:03:32 ◼   ► or not getting enough work done,

00:03:34 ◼   ► or not having good focus,

00:03:36 ◼   ► you know, oh, I'm watching too many YouTube videos,

00:03:38 ◼   ► oh, I'm checking Twitter too many times,

00:03:40 ◼   ► it's like, I need to understand that more likely than not,

00:03:43 ◼   ► procrastinating because I don't care about what I'm doing.

00:03:48 ◼   ► When I care about what I'm doing,

00:03:51 ◼   ► when I'm doing something that is exciting,

00:03:54 ◼   ► that grabs my attention,

00:03:56 ◼   ► then I'm going to make,

00:03:59 ◼   ► I can barely stop thinking about it.

00:04:02 ◼   ► I mean, it's a crazy thing.

00:04:04 ◼   ► It has literally kept me up at night,

00:04:06 ◼   ► which is a dangerous thing when you have young children,

00:04:08 ◼   ► to be thinking about the app.

00:04:11 ◼   ► When I had a problem for how I was going to display some information,

00:04:10 ◼   ► I'm like, "What if I did this? What if I did this?" And I'm lying there in bed at three

00:04:14 ◼   ► in the morning being like, "Yeah, maybe that would work." And I had to resist the urge

00:04:19 ◼   ► to get out and actually try to encode that. I waited until like five in the morning when

00:04:23 ◼   ► it was a reasonable time to jump out of bed and start working on it again. But it is just

00:04:27 ◼   ► a remarkable thing. And I was thinking about how the week before, I had been so unproductive.

00:04:34 ◼   ► I was constantly checking Twitter. I was constantly going to devour.com, which don't go there

00:04:39 ◼   ► if you don't know what it is, but it's a site full of

00:04:44 ◼   ► viral videos and amusing and interesting and inspiring

00:04:46 ◼   ► things.

00:04:47 ◼   ► I was going there all the time, and funny thing,

00:04:51 ◼   ► and I know Merlin Mann of Back to Work's philosophy enough

00:04:55 ◼   ► to know that inbox zero isn't about having an empty inbox,

00:04:59 ◼   ► but I was definitely noticing how almost always

00:05:02 ◼   ► I have nothing in my inbox.

00:05:03 ◼   ► I'm very good about kind of just working through it,

00:05:05 ◼   ► but so often, I think what I'm really doing is I'm just,

00:05:08 ◼   ► That's just a great way for me to feel like

00:05:13 ◼   ► I'm being productive while not being at all productive,

00:05:15 ◼   ► of making sure that I'm staying on top of my inbox

00:05:18 ◼   ► and really pounding it down.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Now there's like 30 things in my inbox and I don't care.

00:05:21 ◼   ► It's just like as long as I scan through it

00:05:24 ◼   ► and make sure nothing's on fire,

00:05:26 ◼   ► like when I get a server alert or something,

00:05:27 ◼   ► I'm like, "I'll go check that out."

00:05:29 ◼   ► But my focus and my attention is on this one thing,

00:05:32 ◼   ► and it's going really well.

00:05:34 ◼   ► I really am pleased with the way the app's going,

00:05:36 ◼   ► and it's really exciting to see and to be reminded of,

00:05:36 ◼   ► what can happen when you really are engaged

00:05:41 ◼   ► in what you're doing.

00:05:42 ◼   ► And I bring it up here because I think so often,

00:05:46 ◼   ► especially if you're an independent, it's so easy,

00:05:49 ◼   ► and I fall into this myself so much,

00:05:51 ◼   ► that it's so easy to feel a reticence about taking risk,

00:05:55 ◼   ► and about jumping out and doing something

00:05:59 ◼   ► when you get, sort of when the mood catches you,

00:06:03 ◼   ► and you get really excited about something,

00:06:04 ◼   ► and you want to dive into something.

00:06:06 ◼   ► And I started thinking, "Oh man, should I really do this?

00:06:11 ◼   ► Wouldn't it be better if I go and work on audiobooks

00:06:14 ◼   ► or my recipe book or this kind of thing?"

00:06:17 ◼   ► And I've jumped on side apps a lot,

00:06:18 ◼   ► but there's always this tension of,

00:06:21 ◼   ► "Am I just wasting my time?

00:06:23 ◼   ► Am I going to spend a couple weeks, a month?

00:06:25 ◼   ► I don't know how long this is going to take.

00:06:27 ◼   ► The app's coming along really well,

00:06:28 ◼   ► but it's still going to take a little while.

00:06:30 ◼   ► I've got to get the icon made

00:06:33 ◼   ► and do all these kinds of things.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And am I just wasting my time?

00:06:34 ◼   ► Am I going to launch it and it'll flop and no one will care?

00:06:37 ◼   ► But the thing is, what I was realizing with this app

00:06:40 ◼   ► in particular, I was like, that doesn't matter.

00:06:42 ◼   ► I'm going to use this app every day probably,

00:06:44 ◼   ► as long as I have an iPhone.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Like, it is exactly the way that I want this information,

00:06:49 ◼   ► and if no one else cares, no one else uses it,

00:06:51 ◼   ► and I make 70 cents, and that's just the 70 cents

00:06:54 ◼   ► I gave myself for not buying my app or whatever,

00:06:57 ◼   ► like my dad buys it, my mom buys it,

00:06:59 ◼   ► a couple friends, that's fine.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Because I'm building something I want to build and I want to use,

00:07:06 ◼   ► and that turns into a good business thing, great.

00:07:10 ◼   ► But I need to give myself permission to not worry about that,

00:07:13 ◼   ► that every single decision I make has to be a big hit.

00:07:16 ◼   ► That every single app I make has to be some huge, big,

00:07:20 ◼   ► impressive thing that's making a lot of money.

00:07:25 ◼   ► That's not how these things work.

00:07:25 ◼   ► What I really should be doing, and what I've been so delighted about this week,

00:07:30 ◼   ► is I should be excited about making apps.

00:07:35 ◼   ► And I should be excited about working on them.

00:07:37 ◼   ► And what I find often, which is a great balance to this,

00:07:39 ◼   ► is when I work on one of these side projects, and I really dive into it,

00:07:43 ◼   ► and I start working on it, and I'm excited.

00:07:46 ◼   ► I mean, it's all I can think about.

00:07:47 ◼   ► I start getting excited about doing other app updates to some of my older apps.

00:07:50 ◼   ► And that's usually because I think I've learned something

00:07:55 ◼   ► in the process of building this app

00:07:59 ◼   ► that I want to apply somewhere else, and that's exciting.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Solving technical problems in interesting and unique ways

00:08:03 ◼   ► is what engineering is.

00:08:07 ◼   ► I would imagine most people who listen to this podcast,

00:08:08 ◼   ► that's what you get excited about.

00:08:11 ◼   ► There are few joys as sweet as when you come up with

00:08:14 ◼   ► the awesome solution to the problem you've been struggling with.

00:08:17 ◼   ► You're in the shower in the morning,

00:08:22 ◼   ► or you are driving to work,

00:08:24 ◼   ► or whatever it is that you come up with the idea.

00:08:26 ◼   ► And you kind of have that,

00:08:28 ◼   ► I mean, it is a rush.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Then you're like, "Yes, that's how I can do it.

00:08:31 ◼   ► That's what I can do.

00:08:34 ◼   ► I'll do this, this, and this,

00:08:34 ◼   ► and then my performance will go through the roof."

00:08:36 ◼   ► Or, "I can do this, this, and this,

00:08:38 ◼   ► and then the app will be so much more performant

00:08:39 ◼   ► or look better," or, "I can reorganize the data in this way.

00:08:43 ◼   ► It'll be great."

00:08:45 ◼   ► And those are lessons and skills that you learn

00:08:45 ◼   ► by experimenting outside of that.

00:08:47 ◼   ► And if you're not excited about what you're working on,

00:08:50 ◼   ► if you find yourself procrastinating,

00:08:51 ◼   ► if you find yourself distracted or easily distracted

00:08:54 ◼   ► or wanting to be distracted, you really

00:08:57 ◼   ► need to take a look at yourself and say,

00:08:59 ◼   ► is what I'm doing worth doing?

00:09:02 ◼   ► Is what I'm doing--

00:09:03 ◼   ► if I'm not at all excited about it

00:09:05 ◼   ► and I'm constantly trying to find ways to avoid doing it,

00:09:08 ◼   ► should I be doing it?

00:09:10 ◼   ► And there are certainly things that you have to do.

00:09:12 ◼   ► But more often than not, you probably

00:09:15 ◼   ► have some amount of choice in that.

00:09:20 ◼   ► And if you don't care, if you're just doing it for money

00:09:22 ◼   ► or you're just doing it because you think you need to

00:09:24 ◼   ► or to impress people or all kinds of other not so great

00:09:26 ◼   ► reasons, you need to really evaluate that.

00:09:29 ◼   ► And it's just kind of because of how striking this experience

00:09:33 ◼   ► was for me, I'm kind of thinking about it in that way.

00:09:35 ◼   ► And I'm like, you know, I'm an independent developer.

00:09:38 ◼   ► I make enough money for my apps that I can live on,

00:09:40 ◼   ► and I need to be able to embrace the fact that if I get

00:09:41 ◼   ► excited about an idea, that I should run with that.

00:09:46 ◼   ► That I should increase my effectiveness and joy

00:09:49 ◼   ► in what I'm doing and my happiness and my engagement

00:09:55 ◼   ► and work by focusing and building what it is

00:09:57 ◼   ► that I'm interested in doing.

00:10:00 ◼   ► And that's what I've been doing, and it's been great.

00:10:02 ◼   ► And I'll probably be talking about this weather app

00:10:04 ◼   ► over the next, probably however long it takes to build,

00:10:06 ◼   ► and then I'll be launching it and so on.

00:10:07 ◼   ► So certainly stay tuned for that.

00:10:12 ◼   ► I think it's always helpful as I walk through this process

00:10:15 ◼   ► from start to finish to talk about the various stages of that here.

00:10:19 ◼   ► So right now I started off with an idea.

00:10:22 ◼   ► And it is one sketch on one page in one notebook.

00:10:25 ◼   ► I'm not the kind of person who sits there and goes into Photoshop

00:10:29 ◼   ► and deep mocks up everything.

00:10:32 ◼   ► It's like I just wanted a concept.

00:10:33 ◼   ► Like this is the vague architecture of what I'm trying to do.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And then I started building.

00:10:38 ◼   ► And I got an app that basically works now.

00:10:39 ◼   ► It is now my main weather app,

00:10:42 ◼   ► and I'm just working on making it faster, more performant,

00:10:44 ◼   ► looking better, UI stuff.

00:10:48 ◼   ► I'll continue to polish and refine it

00:10:51 ◼   ► over the next however long it takes.

00:10:53 ◼   ► But in this process, I'm learning so much.

00:10:55 ◼   ► And I'm making new mistakes,

00:11:00 ◼   ► and remembering old mistakes that I've made before,

00:10:59 ◼   ► and hopefully not making them again.

00:11:04 ◼   ► So it's been going well.

00:11:06 ◼   ► And like I said, an interesting thing

00:11:08 ◼   ► I was just going to throw out there

00:11:10 ◼   ► is certainly to the developing perspective audience.

00:11:11 ◼   ► As I'm building this, I'm always trying to,

00:11:15 ◼   ► I've been talking to a lot of people I know,

00:11:17 ◼   ► just friends and family, about what it is they look for

00:11:18 ◼   ► typically when they're going to go check the weather

00:11:23 ◼   ► and they want to see what's going on.

00:11:26 ◼   ► Kind of what information are they trying to get quickly?

00:11:27 ◼   ► And then secondarily, what information

00:11:32 ◼   ► do they often look for or are hoping to find

00:11:35 ◼   ► that isn't there in the current crop of applications

00:11:38 ◼   ► or they have to struggle to find?

00:11:41 ◼   ► And so if you have thoughts on that,

00:11:43 ◼   ► I'd love for you to respond back to me,

00:11:46 ◼   ► especially if you can fit it into a tweet,

00:11:48 ◼   ► because that's always really nice for consolidating.

00:11:51 ◼   ► And so I'm on Twitter @_davidsmith.

00:11:53 ◼   ► There's a link on the Developing Perspective page,

00:11:53 ◼   ► developingperspective.com if that's easier for you.

00:11:58 ◼   ► And if you have thoughts on that, definitely just let me know.

00:12:02 ◼   ► Just send me a tweet and saying, "This is what I usually look for.

00:12:05 ◼   ► This is my 90% time I open a web app.

00:12:08 ◼   ► This is what I want to know.

00:12:11 ◼   ► And then here's the thing that I've been struggling to find.

00:12:12 ◼   ► I'm going to look at other things."

00:12:15 ◼   ► And make no promises.

00:12:16 ◼   ► Ultimately, I'm building the app that I want and the app that I'm looking for.

00:12:18 ◼   ► But it's always interesting when you gather information like that.

00:12:19 ◼   ► What I'm not looking for is a way to--

00:12:21 ◼   ► I'm not looking for to create an app that's the aggregate,

00:12:26 ◼   ► or I guess really the sum total of all of those requests.

00:12:29 ◼   ► What I'm looking for is those opportunities where

00:12:31 ◼   ► someone says something and I'm like, yes, that

00:12:34 ◼   ► is exactly what I'm missing.

00:12:36 ◼   ► And hopefully that will happen.

00:12:37 ◼   ► And if it does, that's great.

00:12:39 ◼   ► It kind of reminds me, though.

00:12:40 ◼   ► It reminds me a little bit of the--

00:12:42 ◼   ► there's a great page, and I'll link to it in the show notes,

00:12:46 ◼   ► We have Apple submission disclosure agreement

00:12:51 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:12:52 ◼   ► I'll have to find the actual name for it.

00:12:53 ◼   ► There's a funny thing that if you ever send an email

00:12:55 ◼   ► to Apple, there's a little thing on the page

00:12:57 ◼   ► that you have to sort of agree to

00:12:59 ◼   ► before you submit your feedback form

00:13:01 ◼   ► that basically says any information that you send to us,

00:13:04 ◼   ► you are revoking your intellectual ownership of that.

00:13:09 ◼   ► It's just funny because I'm thinking of the same thing.

00:13:11 ◼   ► Whenever I, like I'm,

00:13:12 ◼   ► when if you're collecting feedback,

00:13:14 ◼   ► Because if someone says something and then I implement it, it's not really, there's certainly

00:13:19 ◼   ► a credit where credit's due, but it's like, by sharing publicly your ideas, you are giving

00:13:26 ◼   ► up your right to have that be a secret that you have ownership of.

00:13:31 ◼   ► It just makes me think, and obviously that's not where I'm going with that, it just reminded

00:13:34 ◼   ► me of that as I was saying it, because there's this hilarious page that you have to, the

00:13:39 ◼   ► little agreement that you sign every time you send information to Apple.

00:13:43 ◼   ► so I'll link that up in the show notes.

00:13:45 ◼   ► But otherwise, I hope you guys have a good week.

00:13:47 ◼   ► It's a short week if you're here in the States.

00:13:48 ◼   ► Well, if you're independent, maybe it is, maybe it is not.

00:13:51 ◼   ► But I hope you guys are having a good week.

00:13:52 ◼   ► Do some happy coding, and yeah, I'll talk to you later.

00:13:56 ◼   ► Bye.

00:13:57 ◼   ► [