00:00:00 ◼ ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Mark Guarmant.
00:00:05 ◼ ► And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is usually not longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.
00:00:18 ◼ ► I think it's a perennial topic. I think some of our earlier, earliest episodes are even talking about motivation, but
00:00:25 ◼ ► it's perennial, I think, because it is consistently difficult and is consistently relevant.
00:00:35 ◼ ► That one day I was just like, "You know, I've nailed it. I know exactly how to stay motivated,
00:00:40 ◼ ► how to be motivated, how to be super productive. I don't expect that to ever be the case. I've been
00:00:45 ◼ ► doing this, you know, I've been a professional programmer for over 20 years now, and it's still
00:00:50 ◼ ► gestural with it just as much as I did in those early days. So I don't think it's going to go away.
00:00:55 ◼ ► But what I can do is to just try and understand it, to try and come up with strategies that allow
00:01:02 ◼ ► me to work around it and to be more productive as a result, or at least not be hard on myself when
00:01:08 ◼ ► I'm not being productive. And the specific sort of framing and thing that I wanted, the path I wanted
00:01:14 ◼ ► to walk us down today is coming from a fantastic episode of the Script Notes Podcast, which is a
00:01:21 ◼ ► weekly podcast by John August and Craig Mazin, talking about screenwriting and things that are
00:01:26 ◼ ► interesting to screenwriters, which in some ways you wouldn't think is like, "What, Dave,
00:01:30 ◼ ► why do you listen to that? You are a programmer." And I will say something about this show. And I
00:01:34 ◼ ► think there are many shows like it, that hearing people talk, who are sort of experts in their
00:01:40 ◼ ► field, talk about the way in which they go around making things, like talking about their craft,
00:01:46 ◼ ► is incredibly valuable and is incredibly useful. And I've been listening to Script Notes for,
00:01:51 ◼ ► I don't even know, I think they're in episodes, something like 500 and something, and I've been
00:01:55 ◼ ► listening since I think the 200s. For a very long time I've been listening to this show because
00:02:00 ◼ ► while I don't ever expect to write a screenplay, which is what ostensibly they're talking about,
00:02:05 ◼ ► I've learned a tremendous amount about being better at making things. And I imagine in some
00:02:10 ◼ ► ways, so like I would recommend this show to anyone, and I would imagine, especially if you're
00:02:14 ◼ ► someone who listens to Under the Radar for the same who, but you're not a programmer. And I know
00:02:18 ◼ ► you're out there because I've heard from you that there are people who listen to this show who just
00:02:21 ◼ ► listening to it because hearing Marco and I talk about what we do and how we do it is useful. And
00:02:27 ◼ ► this is another show in the same exact mold where it's people who just are being thoughtful about
00:02:33 ◼ ► what it is to make it. But anyway, that's an aside, but a recommendation. In this last episode,
00:02:40 ◼ ► John was talking about the difference between motivation and inspiration. And there was this
00:02:49 ◼ ► framing about separating those as sort of somewhat separate things where motivation is best in some
00:02:56 ◼ ► ways thought of is the sort of showing up and doing the work regardless. And inspiration is
00:03:04 ◼ ► in some ways, at least the way I took it, is inspiration is those things where you have a spark,
00:03:10 ◼ ► an idea, something that gets sort of a bee in your bonnet that you just can't get rid of,
00:03:15 ◼ ► and it creates motivation almost in and of itself. And those moments can be incredibly effective,
00:03:28 ◼ ► my business is built on inspiration-driven development where I do my best work and work,
00:03:40 ◼ ► get the most output out of myself when I'm inspired, when I have that sense of like, "Wow,
00:03:47 ◼ ► I have a cool idea. I want to build something," and I go and do it. When that happens, it's amazing.
00:03:53 ◼ ► And I think it is useful to separate that from just regular motivation in terms of the ability
00:04:05 ◼ ► because sometimes you won't be inspired. And sometimes you have things that are making you
00:04:11 ◼ ► work that are different than just like the glorious, wonderful, you sit down, you have an
00:04:16 ◼ ► idea and you're flowing and you're in Xcode and it's amazing. When that happens, that's great,
00:04:21 ◼ ► but that isn't most of the time. And I think what really is interesting is, sort of like
00:04:27 ◼ ► noodling this around in my head all week, is the sense that in motivation, we typically think of it
00:04:34 ◼ ► in terms of there's two kinds of motivation. There's intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
00:04:47 ◼ ► work towards something because of an inner drive and desire to accomplish it. That intrinsic,
00:04:54 ◼ ► they decide, "I want to do it," and they go and do it. Whereas extrinsic motivation is the
00:05:00 ◼ ► alternative side of that, whereas instead, it's something outside of you that is causing you to
00:05:07 ◼ ► do whatever it is that you need to do to complete this work. This can be a boss, this can be a
00:05:17 ◼ ► something outside yourself that is causing you to do whatever it is that you need to do.
00:05:29 ◼ ► and why it's so powerful is because it is both intrinsic and extrinsic at the same time. And it
00:05:35 ◼ ► is like the intersection diagram of those two things, where it is internally generated and
00:05:40 ◼ ► internally important, but it almost creates this external push on you because it's something that
00:05:47 ◼ ► you don't want to lose. And it's like the inspiration of the idea itself becomes your boss,
00:05:53 ◼ ► your teacher, your deadline, and pushes you to work. And I think that is just an interesting way
00:05:58 ◼ ► to think about it. And I think an interesting kind of reality that understanding that there are
00:06:03 ◼ ► different modes and different things that motivate you, at least for me, is helpful where right now,
00:06:08 ◼ ► I feel very unmotivated at work. And this is not atypical very often this time of year,
00:06:14 ◼ ► I feel very unmotivated because over the summer, I have lots and lots of extrinsic motivation,
00:06:19 ◼ ► because there's an iOS release coming sometime in September, I have to get this work done. If
00:06:24 ◼ ► it's not done by then, bad things happen. I have that kind of external pressure. I get through
00:06:31 ◼ ► September, I get it out, and that goes away. And I'm left with only sort of in some ways,
00:06:36 ◼ ► my self-directed motivation of which I have very little. And then it's almost like I transition
00:06:41 ◼ ► instead into just like inspiration driven, where it's like the only time I'm actually excited and
00:06:51 ◼ ► something that gets exciting. And that sort of like creates this motivation storm that I will
00:06:56 ◼ ► then be able to ride for a little bit until it dies away. And then I'm unmotivated again entirely.
00:07:09 ◼ ► yep, me too. I mean, I too, I've had a terrible, I feel terrible about my work right now. I just
00:07:17 ◼ ► feel awful about it. I feel like I'm getting nothing done. I feel like I have gotten nothing
00:07:22 ◼ ► done for months. I'm extremely unmotivated, very low energy, very low confidence. And I go through
00:07:29 ◼ ► the cycles, as you were saying, like fall, early fall with the end of the betas and the release of
00:07:35 ◼ ► the new hardware, that is the busiest time for us usually. I kind of burn out after that for a
00:07:40 ◼ ► little while because when I am working at my best, I am capable of incredible productivity,
00:07:49 ◼ ► but it always is in a burst form. It's a burst of it for a little while, whatever that is. Sometimes
00:07:56 ◼ ► it's one day, sometimes it can be like a week or two, maybe a month if I'm lucky. But for the most
00:08:02 ◼ ► part, that's a burst. And then I have to basically come down and recharge and have relatively low
00:08:10 ◼ ► productivity for usually three or four times whatever that interval was. And that can be months
00:08:16 ◼ ► or at least weeks. And during those times, I really feel terrible about my work, about myself,
00:08:22 ◼ ► about what am I doing here. And it can be very hard to swing back out of that again, to get back
00:08:33 ◼ ► into doing things. And this past couple of months have been interruption after interruption,
00:08:39 ◼ ► distraction after distraction, failed effort after failed effort. And part of why I push for certain
00:08:48 ◼ ► things that I push for, things like using mature tools, keeping certain problem sets simple,
00:08:56 ◼ ► not tackling too many really hairy, difficult problems, is because there are certain things
00:09:02 ◼ ► that I think sap your productivity and your motivation faster than others. I mean, certainly
00:09:07 ◼ ► interruptions are a big one. And that's something that a lot of times we just can't control. I mean,
00:09:15 ◼ ► coming from things like events around you, your family, situational stuff that's happening around
00:09:22 ◼ ► you, things you have to do for yourself, maybe for other reasons like for health or whatever,
00:09:26 ◼ ► there's so many interruptions to our work. And that has been the summary of my last month.
00:09:38 ◼ ► you got to stop right now because something has to be taken care of." Or it's a day off of school.
00:09:45 ◼ ► And so you don't want to leave your kid alone in front of a screen all day long, or stuff like
00:09:50 ◼ ► that. Or you have to go to a wedding, go to a family event. There's been so many of those things
00:09:55 ◼ ► in my life for the last couple of months. None of this is, it isn't just happening to me. Some of
00:10:00 ◼ ► it's my fault too. I'm sharing the blame here. But there's so many of those things that I've had
00:10:07 ◼ ► very little work time that's made up of solid long blocks. I've had a lot of little slices. Oh,
00:10:14 ◼ ► you can work on stuff for two hours. Oh, stop. You can have 45 minutes here. Oh, stop. And
00:10:21 ◼ ► that kind of thing saps motivation like crazy. Another thing is fighting your tools. Again,
00:10:28 ◼ ► this is why I always think of keeping things as conservative as possible with tooling. This is
00:10:34 ◼ ► why I don't jump into new frameworks, new languages, new APIs on day one or on year one. Because
00:10:42 ◼ ► fighting your tools, fighting your languages, if you're hitting bugs in Xcode or whatever,
00:10:48 ◼ ► that's a motivation killer. Fighting the Apple distribution system in whatever form that takes
00:10:55 ◼ ► between the code signing all the way up to app store review, that's a motivation killer.
00:10:59 ◼ ► And so what I have found for my kind of general motivation happiness is to try to create
00:11:09 ◼ ► opportunities where you can work for a long span of time, maybe like a whole day. If you're lucky,
00:11:14 ◼ ► multiple days, but that's too optimistic for me usually. If you can get a whole day where
00:11:21 ◼ ► you're only doing the fun part. And this is not going to obviously be possible every day,
00:11:26 ◼ ► but try to cram in one of these on some kind of regular basis, whether you can do it once a week
00:11:31 ◼ ► or twice, whatever it is, whatever you can do. Stack all your work in such a way that you can
00:11:37 ◼ ► have one big block of time that you can do the part that you actually like. So for us, it's
00:11:42 ◼ ► probably like the actual working in Xcode, like that part. I love that part. And I am so often
00:11:48 ◼ ► not doing that part because something else gets in the way. And if you can coalesce your availability
00:12:02 ◼ ► I have found that helps a lot. And where if you just say, all right, here's an entire day. And if
00:12:07 ◼ ► you start that day unmotivated or in like, you know, a low, low energy state, if you then give
00:12:13 ◼ ► yourself, all right, this entire day, all I have to do today is open up Xcode and try to get something
00:12:19 ◼ ► done. And there's nothing else on your plate that day. And you have four hours and then a quick meal
00:12:26 ◼ ► and then four more hours, whatever it is, whatever you can do. That is a really good way to get
00:12:33 ◼ ► yourself moving again, to like unfreeze yourself, to get the wheels moving, start building some
00:12:40 ◼ ► inertia. And even if you only have one of those a week, that's enough not only to get a decent
00:12:45 ◼ ► amount done, you'd be surprised, but also to help you judge yourself more positively, to help you
00:12:53 ◼ ► turn your own mood around and to be less judgmental about yourself being like, man, I'm pretty
00:12:59 ◼ ► worthless this week. I'm not getting anything done. Like if you have a day or two where you
00:13:02 ◼ ► can get something done in that large block, it is extremely helpful in so many ways. And
00:13:09 ◼ ► whenever I go like a week or two or three without having anything like that, like I am right now,
00:13:16 ◼ ► I feel horrible about my work. But when I've been able to do that, and I'm here, I'm talking to
00:13:23 ◼ ► myself here, this is the path out of this, like this is how to do it. And I've even found that it
00:13:29 ◼ ► matters like what I'm working on during that time. Like part of the reason why I've had a lot of,
00:13:37 ◼ ► well, I've felt down a lot recently about my Overcast work is that I've spent so much time
00:13:43 ◼ ► recently bogged down in either server work, which I'm increasingly coming to hate and increasingly
00:13:50 ◼ ► looking to get myself out of some capacity. And also the kind of work where I'm just dealing with
00:13:58 ◼ ► other people's problems or stuff in the sense that Overcast crawls a bunch of podcasts and then has
00:14:05 ◼ ► to serve those people. Well, recently I've been having problems with podcasts I've been crawling
00:14:10 ◼ ► in various ways. Like all of Cloudflare I'm having a problem with right now, which is kind of big.
00:14:16 ◼ ► There are different podcast hosts that mess up their GUIDs or have bad redirects or things.
00:14:23 ◼ ► I have to deal with this problem now. It feels like repetitive, almost janitorial work of like,
00:14:33 ◼ ► "I'm cleaning up someone else's mess here. I'd rather be making the app better for everybody,
00:14:38 ◼ ► but instead I have to do this." And part of that is, "Oh, well, bad luck, bad timing. This kind
00:14:43 ◼ ► of stuff happens sometimes." Part of it is, "I made an app that depends on a bunch of other
00:14:48 ◼ ► people's servers and content and behavior, and so I kind of signed up for this." And so if I'm trying
00:14:55 ◼ ► to get a nice, satisfying, large block of work done, it's probably better to either not go into
00:15:03 ◼ ► this kind of business to begin with, but hey, I'm here now, and/or to work on an area that doesn't
00:15:09 ◼ ► touch all that stuff. So rather than working on something that needs a server-side component
00:15:14 ◼ ► or something that needs to deal with people's broken feeds or broken hosts, work on something
00:15:21 ◼ ► that's totally self-contained and away from all those areas, like some kind of fun interface
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00:16:57 ◼ ► So I really appreciate you saying that. While I'm sad to hear that it's been a difficult time
00:17:04 ◼ ► recently for you, there is something, and this is part of why I wanted to bring this up as a topic,
00:17:14 ◼ ► you are someone whose work I admire, who has created wonderful things, but yet you still
00:17:19 ◼ ► struggle with this. And I feel like it's the same with me, where I feel like I've made things that
00:17:24 ◼ ► are successful and have done well, but it is still something that I struggle with. And I think being
00:17:31 ◼ ► forthright about that is useful. Because I think the spiral that you start to talk about of like
00:17:43 ◼ ► you can get into the imposter syndrome side of that or just the classic, I mean, even just like
00:17:55 ◼ ► Like, that is just hard. Yeah, like, I wouldn't pretend to be qualified in the area to label any
00:18:03 ◼ ► part of anything as depression, because I'm not a mental health expert. But I would describe myself
00:18:08 ◼ ► as professionally depressed most of the summer. Like in terms of like my iOS development,
00:18:13 ◼ ► and myself as a programmer, I have been like a programmer depressed all summer and all fall so
00:18:18 ◼ ► far. Oh, yeah. And I'm so sorry. I'm sorry to hear that. And it's like, it is, but it is also like,
00:18:24 ◼ ► I've had long swaths of this year where I think I feel exactly the same way. That, you know, it's
00:18:30 ◼ ► this really tenuous thing that I feel like in some ways because of what we do is so like, especially
00:18:37 ◼ ► being independent, where so much of our self-worth can be tied into what it is we're making.
00:18:43 ◼ ► It's harder to then separate the, you know, the act of creation from us as people. That, you know,
00:18:51 ◼ ► it's like, if my app is good, then I am good. Because I am app like, that's what I do. It's very,
00:18:57 ◼ ► it's very different than when I used to work. It's a long time ago that I used to do this when I used
00:19:01 ◼ ► to work at a big company. And it's like we had a product release. And it was like, I was one of
00:19:05 ◼ ► 30 people who worked on it. And that has a certain sense of camaraderie, but it's a different sense
00:19:10 ◼ ► of ownership. And I didn't feel as personally, you know, like when there were bugs and issues in that
00:19:16 ◼ ► app, it's like, I didn't feel like I was personally responsible for them in the same way. And so it
00:19:20 ◼ ► can definitely be very different in terms of the way it sort of affects you psychologically and
00:19:28 ◼ ► from like a self-care mental health perspective. But I also so sort of agree and can have so much
00:19:36 ◼ ► experience that jives with what you're saying about. And finally, it makes me think of it,
00:19:40 ◼ ► you know, in the same episode of script notes where they're talking about this, they were
00:19:43 ◼ ► talking about how if you encounter like writer's block, one of the most important things is to just
00:19:49 ◼ ► start writing, that it's the sense that if you don't know what to write, that's fine. Just start
00:19:54 ◼ ► writing, like whatever it is, you can write anything, anything, just to start writing. I
00:19:58 ◼ ► don't know what to write. Writing is really hard. I find writing very difficult and just start,
00:20:02 ◼ ► just start. And that is so often the thing that is helpful at getting you out of, you know, sort of
00:20:11 ◼ ► funks or, you know, sort of dead ends or things. And it's in a weird way, it makes me think of it
00:20:16 ◼ ► sort of it's like creativity is a ship that can be steered with a rudder, but very slowly. And it's
00:20:24 ◼ ► sort of like, it's almost like you can sneak up on problems you have to solve by generating some
00:20:30 ◼ ► inertia and speed in a different direction by just doing something you like that's related or
00:20:36 ◼ ► anything really just start making something. And then you start turning your rudder and you can
00:20:40 ◼ ► gradually point it towards the problem that you actually need to solve. Like for me, I've been
00:20:45 ◼ ► recently doing a lot of work making custom Apple Watch faces, which is, I think useful in so far as
00:20:52 ◼ ► it's developing some design skills and things I do. But mostly I'm just doing it because I enjoy
00:20:57 ◼ ► doing it. And I like making it and I can, you know, it's very easy for me to motivate myself to sit
00:21:03 ◼ ► down for three or four hours and make it what make an Apple Watch face. And it's helpful just because
00:21:09 ◼ ► it builds up that little bit of speed that I can then you turn towards things that I need to solve
00:21:15 ◼ ► like I had to deal with, you know, some weird esoteric crashing bug in widgetsmith that like was
00:21:20 ◼ ► one of those just melts your brain and was not not not fun at all. But it's like the way I got there,
00:21:27 ◼ ► was by sort of building up momentum, going in one direction, just making Apple Apple Watch faces,
00:21:33 ◼ ► and then almost like as it's like cheating by then turning the turning the rudder off my creativity
00:21:38 ◼ ► ship and just like turning it turning it around and you're taking advantage of the inertia that
00:21:42 ◼ ► I had to deal with it. Otherwise, I would just look at the problem be like, I don't want to do
00:21:46 ◼ ► this. This is hard. Like, this is really, I don't I don't know where to start. I don't know what to
00:21:51 ◼ ► do. I have no sort of motivation to do this. And so I just wasn't. It's like there's this bug that's
00:21:57 ◼ ► affecting people that I really should be dealing with, but I wasn't dealing with it. And it's like,
00:22:01 ◼ ► in some ways, going off and making Apple Watch faces is like the opposite in terms of like,
00:22:06 ◼ ► well, it's like, how is that going to help? It's like, but in the reality is I've found
00:22:14 ◼ ► you know, sort of sit rather than sitting down and being frustrated. It's like sit down at your desk
00:22:19 ◼ ► and do something that is in any way productive in any way, you know, encouraging you creatively
00:22:25 ◼ ► is tremendously helpful in terms of, you know, moving that up. And it's not like it's this magic
00:22:29 ◼ ► thing that'll just like solve all your problems. But it definitely, I find it, you know, it's a
00:22:34 ◼ ► tool that you can use, which is at the end of the day, all we have is like our strategies. It's like,
00:22:38 ◼ ► we have different strategies for getting us out of different holes. And that's one that I think
00:22:48 ◼ ► whether intentionally or not, pretty frequently. Because, you know, if you look at the, you know,
00:22:54 ◼ ► whatever apps I've made over the years, some of them are apps that I have only made for myself,
00:22:58 ◼ ► some of them I've never even released. And I do follow this pattern a lot where like, all right,
00:23:04 ◼ ► if I'm if I'm kind of in a slump on my main app, whether it was Instapaper back in the day or
00:23:09 ◼ ► Overcast now, during those slumps, I would sometimes take a little break and go do something
00:23:15 ◼ ► else and make some other app that, you know, even if I would never release it, or even if it wasn't
00:23:21 ◼ ► even an app, maybe it's some like, you know, weird thing I'm doing like for smart home stuff or other
00:23:25 ◼ ► like, you know, kind of personal projects. But like, you know, recently, just in the last couple
00:23:29 ◼ ► days, I decided, I'm going to break my logjam here by making an app that's going to serve my local
00:23:36 ◼ ► community for a very weird and specialized need. This app will most likely have a user base of
00:23:42 ◼ ► between, you know, one and 20 people. And the maximum user base you could ever have ever is
00:23:49 ◼ ► about 200 people. If every single person who could use this app does use this app, it's about 200
00:23:54 ◼ ► people. So it's a very, very small thing. There's no commercial, you know, potential here at all.
00:23:59 ◼ ► It's just to make my life a little bit better. And hopefully these other people's lives better as
00:24:03 ◼ ► well. And I'm spending a few days doing this because it makes me feel good to do to do like,
00:24:09 ◼ ► you know, new project and let's do the fun part only when not deal with anyone's RSS feeds or
00:24:13 ◼ ► server problems. You know, deal with that. And that is frequently a way to like, kind of, you
00:24:19 ◼ ► know, as you said, like kind of get yourself moving again, like unclog the logjam or whatever
00:24:24 ◼ ► metaphors I'm mixing up here. And finally get yourself moving again. Because even though it
00:24:31 ◼ ► feels like you're wasting time, which can make you then judge yourself even more negatively,
00:24:36 ◼ ► like, Oh my God, why am I doing this when I should be doing this? You know, I'm no stranger to those
00:24:41 ◼ ► feelings. But yeah, that's also half my life is spent feeling those feelings. But, but ultimately,
00:24:54 ◼ ► by temporarily doing something else that feels like time wasting, but it gets you out of that
00:24:59 ◼ ► funk, then that is actually helping the original thing. Because then, as you mentioned, you can
00:25:04 ◼ ► take that momentum that you have or, or the the newly freed up, you know, mental block,
00:25:12 ◼ ► And that is way better than just sitting in the funk yelling at yourself for two weeks.
00:25:18 ◼ ► Yeah, and I think something there that has been a useful way for me to frame it for myself to kind
00:25:23 ◼ ► of give myself permission to do what you're talking about, which I don't like need to, but
00:25:27 ◼ ► I find that I maybe I do need to be, I should maybe I shouldn't need to, but I do need to,
00:25:32 ◼ ► to give myself sort of a justification for it. It was a thought I'd had recently of that in many
00:25:48 ◼ ► the motivation side, the thing that I can press on to increase and is making just as much of a,
00:25:56 ◼ ► you know, meaningful impact on my productivity is to increase my ability. So in this case,
00:26:05 ◼ ► it is increasing my ability, it is definitely making me a better developer. Every time I do
00:26:15 ◼ ► the act of making that is improving my skill set is improving what I'm able to do is and maybe it's
00:26:21 ◼ ► in subtle ways. Maybe it's just, you know, in terms of like, it there's, there's a sense of
00:26:26 ◼ ► just being better at doing the basics, like that is still a useful thing. Like, it's been a long
00:26:31 ◼ ► time since I did martial arts. But when I was a kid, I remember doing karate, and we would do the
00:26:36 ◼ ► same movement over and over again, not because we were like learning something new, but because we
00:26:42 ◼ ► were getting better at being able to repeat that skill over and over. And so it's just something
00:26:47 ◼ ► that I think of now is whenever I'm doing these, like, sort of side projects, you know, it's like,
00:26:52 ◼ ► I'm, you know, making Apple Watch faces or building a hiking app or doing these things that aren't
00:26:56 ◼ ► necessarily one day going to be, you know, big parts of my main business. It's like, well,
00:27:00 ◼ ► what I'm doing is increasing my abilities that when I need to increase, so I can overall my like,
00:27:06 ◼ ► you know, my productivity, when I have the motivation to really dive at my main problems
00:27:11 ◼ ► that I need to, or that are most important for pushing my, you know, my business forward,
00:27:15 ◼ ► I have increased ability to do that. And it's like, because it's in some ways, if you know,
00:27:20 ◼ ► if my mental model is at all valid in the sense of it's like one times the other, you know, if I can
00:27:24 ◼ ► make an increase in one, it'll offset times when I'm, you know, struggling or behind on the other.
00:27:29 ◼ ► And so, I don't know, it's a useful tool that I found to kind of justify those sort of side
00:27:35 ◼ ► projects for myself. That's a good way to look at it. Yeah, because like one of the like, you know,
00:27:39 ◼ ► negative voices in my head whenever I do one of these is like, you know, if the thing I'm working
00:27:44 ◼ ► on has no relevance to overcast whatsoever in terms of like, API's or technologies used or
00:27:49 ◼ ► anything like, you know, like what I'm doing, what I'm doing with my dumb little local app here that
00:27:53 ◼ ► I'm making, it's, it's location based, it's about driving. And there is, I there's no reason for me
00:28:00 ◼ ► to use location stuff mapping kind of things like there's no reason for me to use any of that in
00:28:05 ◼ ► overcast. And so there's no overlap, like, you know, on the surface. But at the same time,
00:28:12 ◼ ► as I'm doing that, I'll be using things like Swift UI, and, you know, push notification services and
00:28:17 ◼ ► things like that, that are like, okay, actually, and maybe I can mix in cloud kicks, I'm trying to
00:28:21 ◼ ► get better at cloud kit and to help avoid the server stuff I'm dealing with. And so like,
00:28:26 ◼ ► there's other things that I can blend in, that that might be, you know, they might not have an
00:28:31 ◼ ► immediate value in terms of direct relevance to my main thing. But who knows, like six months from
00:28:38 ◼ ► now, or six years from now, they might have value. And I won't know until I until I get there, and I
00:28:44 ◼ ► might never get there. And that's also okay. Yeah, because the whole point is that you would, you,
00:28:49 ◼ ► the person, the developer would have been improved as a result, like, overcast is an important thing.
00:28:55 ◼ ► It's a useful part of, you know, your life and what you do. But it's also like, you know,
00:28:59 ◼ ► Marco is important too. And making Marco better is a worthwhile thing, just even in and of itself
00:29:05 ◼ ► without needing it to be something that has this spillover effect into the things that Marco makes.
00:29:10 ◼ ► Marco itself is important. And it's important that you're kind to yourself and take care of yourself
00:29:19 ◼ ► be anyone listening, be kind to yourself. Like, number one, make sure that you don't be too hard
00:29:24 ◼ ► on yourself. Understand that people even like Marco and I have been doing this a very long time
00:29:28 ◼ ► and had some success with it. This is still the struggle, like, whatever, you know, 10,
00:29:32 ◼ ► 13 years on, it's still very difficult. Yep. And we got to just do what we can care for ourselves