Under the Radar

00:00:00 ◼   ► Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I'm Mark Orment.

00:00:04 ◼   ► And I'm David Smith.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Under the Radar is never longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started.

00:00:09 ◼   ► So first of all, some quick follow-up.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Last week we were talking about the new hardware and how it might be useful to developers.

00:00:14 ◼   ► I got actually a Mac mini review unit, and I did a full review over at marker.org and

00:00:19 ◼   ► on YouTube.

00:00:21 ◼   ► And so check it out if you are interested.

00:00:23 ◼   ► The short version for developers is that it's really fast.

00:00:26 ◼   ► The CPU -- the GPU is not so good, but the CPU is really fast.

00:00:29 ◼   ► And so actually, as a developer machine, if you want a Mac mini for development, I would

00:00:35 ◼   ► say it is very -- more than sufficient.

00:00:38 ◼   ► It is a really good choice for that.

00:00:40 ◼   ► So anyway, that's it for follow-up.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Our first follow-up ever?

00:00:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Probably.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Trademark John Siracusa 2010.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Something like that.

00:00:49 ◼   ► But I think for the actual topic, I think we wanted to dive into a little bit this week.

00:00:53 ◼   ► It's something that is coming out of my own personal experience recently, which I feel

00:00:58 ◼   ► like often some of our best topics tend to come out that way.

00:01:01 ◼   ► But it's -- I've been having a lot of trouble recently being motivated and productive.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Like, it's just -- I know that this thing -- like, productivity comes in seasons.

00:01:11 ◼   ► And I've been doing this for 10 years.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Actually, tomorrow, I think, is the 10-year anniversary of my first app being approved

00:01:16 ◼   ► in the App Store.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Ah, congratulations almost.

00:01:18 ◼   ► Yeah, almost.

00:01:19 ◼   ► But 10 years, I've been doing this.

00:01:21 ◼   ► And I've gone through this cycle many times, where there's some times that you just feel

00:01:26 ◼   ► like you are so motivated, you're productive.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Like every day, you just want to get to work.

00:01:31 ◼   ► And then there's seasons like I'm in right now, where I can get hardly anything done.

00:01:36 ◼   ► And sometimes I just try and nothing happens.

00:01:39 ◼   ► Sometimes it's hard to even start.

00:01:41 ◼   ► And this concept of cycles of motivation is actually kind of a -- that term has been stuck

00:01:47 ◼   ► in my head since 2010, when you, on your previous development podcast, Build and Analyze, episode

00:01:53 ◼   ► number six --

00:01:54 ◼   ► That's way back.

00:01:55 ◼   ► Way back.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Way, way back, coined the term "cycles of motivation."

00:01:59 ◼   ► That was the title for that show.

00:02:01 ◼   ► And I think it's a good encapsulation of this feeling, where sometimes you're going great,

00:02:06 ◼   ► and sometimes you're not.

00:02:08 ◼   ► And it can be at a macro level, where you can go through a period where, for days and

00:02:13 ◼   ► weeks, or maybe even up to months, it can be tough or good, or it can go at a micro

00:02:18 ◼   ► level, where sometimes different parts of the day can be good and bad.

00:02:21 ◼   ► But where I am right now is, if anything, it reminds me of writer's block, where you

00:02:26 ◼   ► hear about writers who hit a point and it's really hard for them to write.

00:02:31 ◼   ► I'm in coder's block right now, and I find it really hard to program.

00:02:36 ◼   ► And so it seemed like an interesting topic to unpack and talk about, and I think specifically

00:02:41 ◼   ► to talk at it from some of the reasons and the causes.

00:02:46 ◼   ► Once you're in this place, there's a variety of strategies.

00:02:48 ◼   ► And I think we've had episodes previously talking about strategies to get out, but some

00:02:54 ◼   ► of the things that might get you into a place where it's hard to feel motivated or productive.

00:03:00 ◼   ► And if you know what the causes are, you can either be more aware of them coming into it,

00:03:06 ◼   ► and then also just maybe potentially avoid bad thought patterns and things that can get

00:03:11 ◼   ► you into trouble by being aware of it ahead of time.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Yeah, this is like, as you pulled up my podcast from eight years ago, I have always had this

00:03:23 ◼   ► problem.

00:03:24 ◼   ► I've always worked in bursts.

00:03:25 ◼   ► I have always had these cycles of motivation, as apparently I said eight years ago or 10

00:03:31 ◼   ► years ago.

00:03:32 ◼   ► I have no recollection of this, but it's a long time ago now.

00:03:37 ◼   ► I've never been a consistent worker.

00:03:39 ◼   ► I've never had a consistent work ethic.

00:03:41 ◼   ► And it helps to have some external factors influencing it.

00:03:46 ◼   ► I've released the podcast I do, both this and ATP, I release every single week.

00:03:53 ◼   ► There's an episode every week.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Even if we can't record that week, we'll record one ahead of time, and we have never missed

00:03:58 ◼   ► a week.

00:04:00 ◼   ► And that is just like, I feel partly motivated by, there are sponsors that have commitments

00:04:06 ◼   ► with us, and also that I'm doing these shows with other people.

00:04:10 ◼   ► And that helps a lot too.

00:04:12 ◼   ► And so there's kind of systems in place for that, but things that I don't have hard deadlines

00:04:18 ◼   ► for, or things that I'm doing only for and with myself, it's much harder to maintain

00:04:25 ◼   ► that level of motivation for more than a while.

00:04:30 ◼   ► And I found that one of the ways, one of the only ways that I'm able to be independent

00:04:34 ◼   ► like this is that I have the luxury that most of the other things I do besides podcasts

00:04:39 ◼   ► don't have hard schedules and hard deadlines and everything.

00:04:44 ◼   ► It's much more freeform.

00:04:46 ◼   ► I can work on Overcast.

00:04:47 ◼   ► There's some level of baseline work I have to always do, like I have to respond to ad

00:04:54 ◼   ► inquiries because that's where the money comes from.

00:04:55 ◼   ► I have to respond to customer support if there's real bad problems there.

00:04:59 ◼   ► I have to keep the servers running because the entire app depends on them running all

00:05:03 ◼   ► the time.

00:05:04 ◼   ► But other stuff like actually improving the app, working on new features, working on new

00:05:09 ◼   ► designs, that kind of stuff can pretty much happen any time or no time.

00:05:14 ◼   ► So I'm very bursty with that.

00:05:18 ◼   ► I do a big burst of work for, I'll have a couple of solid weeks where I'm just amazing,

00:05:23 ◼   ► getting tons of stuff done, and then I'll have a month where I don't touch it at all.

00:05:29 ◼   ► I've never been able to level out that pattern.

00:05:32 ◼   ► It's always been spiky like that.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think something that took me a long time to get comfortable with is that

00:05:39 ◼   ► reality of that burstiness.

00:05:42 ◼   ► Maybe this isn't applied to everybody.

00:05:43 ◼   ► Some people maybe just level Steven the whole time.

00:05:46 ◼   ► That's great.

00:05:47 ◼   ► But I had to get used to the fact that sometimes I'm just not going to be able to get any work

00:05:53 ◼   ► done.

00:05:55 ◼   ► Coming from an hourly-based, like I used to do consulting where I worked for a consulting

00:06:01 ◼   ► company for other companies, and that work, every hour, you need 40 billable hours every

00:06:08 ◼   ► single week.

00:06:10 ◼   ► That is something that you are measured by and your performance is based on, and it is

00:06:14 ◼   ► an important part of that.

00:06:17 ◼   ► So having a day where you just feel like you've got nothing done or you really just couldn't

00:06:22 ◼   ► work and you just had to go for a walk felt really problematic, I think, early on, where

00:06:28 ◼   ► it's like, "What am I doing?

00:06:29 ◼   ► I'm just wasting all this time.

00:06:30 ◼   ► I could have gotten so much done."

00:06:31 ◼   ► I think at a certain point, you just have to accept that this seems to be just a common

00:06:37 ◼   ► pattern and it should make you uncomfortable, probably.

00:06:40 ◼   ► This is where I've settled for myself.

00:06:43 ◼   ► When I go through a season where I feel really blocked, where I feel like I can't really

00:06:48 ◼   ► get work done, it should continue to make me feel uncomfortable.

00:06:52 ◼   ► That it shouldn't be just like, "Oh yeah, this is totally fine.

00:06:55 ◼   ► At some point, it'll get better and I'll start working again."

00:06:58 ◼   ► That wouldn't be a great thing.

00:07:00 ◼   ► It's good to feel uncomfortable, but I think it's also good to just accept the fact that

00:07:04 ◼   ► this just seems to happen.

00:07:06 ◼   ► I think there is some amount of just the nature of this kind of work, and especially the independent

00:07:10 ◼   ► development side of it, where you're not externally connected to other things that

00:07:17 ◼   ► force you to do work.

00:07:19 ◼   ► You're naturally going to have these bursts where you're working way too much and then

00:07:22 ◼   ► you're going to work way too little.

00:07:25 ◼   ► Maybe it would be nice if it was evened out, but in my experience, it doesn't really happen.

00:07:31 ◼   ► And I think I too used to mentally beat myself up over it more than I do now because the

00:07:39 ◼   ► reality is what doesn't matter is that you work 40 hours a week.

00:07:45 ◼   ► What does matter is the work getting done.

00:07:48 ◼   ► That's really the question that matters.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Are you getting done what you need to get done at the end of the week or the month or

00:07:55 ◼   ► whatever time interval you're measuring?

00:07:59 ◼   ► All the jobs I've had, my bosses very quickly all figured out the way I work in this bursty

00:08:04 ◼   ► way.

00:08:05 ◼   ► It very quickly became like they would walk by my computer and see that I was browsing

00:08:10 ◼   ► a web forum and they would stop asking questions because they knew that eventually I would

00:08:14 ◼   ► get the work done and that if you average out my productivity over time, I was doing

00:08:18 ◼   ► a full-time job worth of work, just not in the traditional pattern of time doing it.

00:08:25 ◼   ► I would do two solid mornings of work and that would be the same amount that other people

00:08:31 ◼   ► would get done in a whole week of just slowly diligently working normally because I'm lucky

00:08:37 ◼   ► that I could work very quickly and very well in short bursts, but in the rest of the week,

00:08:41 ◼   ► my brain is just in a different mode and I can't make myself do it.

00:08:45 ◼   ► And that's how I was in all my other jobs, that's how I am now, but the reality is the

00:08:52 ◼   ► work gets done.

00:08:53 ◼   ► The businesses keep going, the apps are fine, my apps are not in extreme neglect.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Some of them are like Quitter, which is my dumb little Mac app, but it works.

00:09:05 ◼   ► It doesn't need a lot of attention.

00:09:08 ◼   ► Forecast is a low priority, but it also works.

00:09:10 ◼   ► I use it every week, twice at least, and so that works fine, but I don't give it a lot

00:09:14 ◼   ► of attention.

00:09:16 ◼   ► And Overcast has an up and down pattern, but it averages out to be, I remain competitive,

00:09:24 ◼   ► the app remains good and useful to its customers, the money it brings in is normal and fine,

00:09:30 ◼   ► and so everything's going fine, even though I work in this really seemingly bad pattern.

00:09:37 ◼   ► I think it's interesting to me to unpack for the rest of the show, some of the things that

00:09:40 ◼   ► at least I find get us into this place.

00:09:43 ◼   ► I think the first one, which I'll take lower down in my list, but I think is a great segue

00:09:48 ◼   ► to what you were just talking about, is in a weird way, I find that success can be a

00:09:53 ◼   ► big challenge to motivation.

00:09:55 ◼   ► While it's slightly counterintuitive, but sometimes I find that when things are going

00:10:00 ◼   ► well, when things are moving along, there's less of that hunger or need to feel like I

00:10:06 ◼   ► have to keep working.

00:10:09 ◼   ► Once my apps get to that place, where they're working pretty well, nothing's on fire, revenue

00:10:14 ◼   ► is solid and stable, it becomes harder than in the initial periods when I was working,

00:10:20 ◼   ► to where I felt like there was that urgency and that need to do things.

00:10:26 ◼   ► I think also too, once you get to a certain point of success, it becomes harder to justify

00:10:33 ◼   ► growth as a requirement, rather than just as a "would be nice."

00:10:37 ◼   ► It's something that I found too, where you get to a place that you have a good stable

00:10:41 ◼   ► income that is meeting your needs and giving you a comfortable lifestyle.

00:10:46 ◼   ► Then it's hard to want to go crazy again, like you were in the early days, to try and

00:10:52 ◼   ► grow again, because the marginal increase in your happiness or your benefit to your

00:10:58 ◼   ► family or anything will go down.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Having those types of extra work has an external cost to you, to your relationships, your health,

00:11:09 ◼   ► etc., all of those things, and so it becomes harder to justify.

00:11:12 ◼   ► In a weird way, I find success can be a strange challenge for motivation, where once you arrive,

00:11:19 ◼   ► at least for me, I find it harder to have that same hunger again.

00:11:24 ◼   ► I would even argue that everything you just said is actually a good thing for indies to

00:11:32 ◼   ► kind of back off of something once it has reached a successful plateau.

00:11:38 ◼   ► A lot of times people are tempted to just keep working and working and working, pouring

00:11:43 ◼   ► tons of time into something that has plateaued, when that probably is not an efficient use

00:11:49 ◼   ► of that time for your business.

00:11:52 ◼   ► If something seems to be working just fine, there's an infinite amount of time you could

00:11:56 ◼   ► put into it.

00:11:57 ◼   ► There's always more things you can add.

00:11:59 ◼   ► There's always more features you can make better or re-architect.

00:12:03 ◼   ► There's always things you could redesign, new technologies you could adopt from the

00:12:07 ◼   ► platform or whatever.

00:12:08 ◼   ► There's always going to be more stuff to do, but certain apps or businesses just can't

00:12:13 ◼   ► actually justify that.

00:12:16 ◼   ► You as a person have limited time, especially if you're an indie like us, when you are the

00:12:20 ◼   ► only person in your business, or close to it at least, then the most costly thing you

00:12:27 ◼   ► have is your work time.

00:12:31 ◼   ► It might not be worth, once something has reached whatever your level of success definition

00:12:35 ◼   ► is, it might not be worth pouring a lot more time into it until it needs something.

00:12:40 ◼   ► Don't just think, "Well, I have this app.

00:12:42 ◼   ► It's going great.

00:12:43 ◼   ► I'm out of things to do for it, so I guess I will redesign it," or something like that.

00:12:48 ◼   ► That's not necessarily the right use of that time.

00:12:52 ◼   ► I consider that kind of motivational cycle driver to be possibly positive.

00:12:59 ◼   ► Oh, sure.

00:13:00 ◼   ► It's an interesting way to look at it, to view that your motivation for working on something

00:13:06 ◼   ► may diminish as it becomes successful as a feature and not a bug.

00:13:11 ◼   ► As it becomes sustainable, part of the benefit of the kind of work we do is that it generates

00:13:17 ◼   ► -- it's not passive income in a true sense, but it's semi-passive.

00:13:23 ◼   ► If you never stop to take advantage of that, then you're kind of missing out on an opportunity.

00:13:29 ◼   ► The time that you would spend re-architecting a big chunk of this app that doesn't really

00:13:33 ◼   ► need to be re-architected or redesigning or whatever else, that time could be better spent

00:13:37 ◼   ► going in a whole different direction, whether it's a new app, a new product, a new service,

00:13:42 ◼   ► or a totally different new kind of feature that will bring the app to way more people

00:13:48 ◼   ► or will totally change what kind of thing it is.

00:13:50 ◼   ► That's a better use of that time than just polishing and prodding away and refactoring

00:13:58 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:13:59 ◼   ► It doesn't need to be software development.

00:14:01 ◼   ► What if you spend that time instead starting up a podcast or a YouTube channel or something

00:14:05 ◼   ► where you can promote your stuff?

00:14:06 ◼   ► That actually might be better for your business than adding one more feature that 5% of the

00:14:11 ◼   ► users will actually use.

00:14:13 ◼   ► And I think it gets to another one of the things on my list of things that I find challenging

00:14:17 ◼   ► to productivity where I feel like boredom can very quickly sap my motivation.

00:14:24 ◼   ► That if I feel like I've solved this problem before and I'm continuing to solve it again

00:14:29 ◼   ► and again and again, that level of that kind of boredom is really hard to make me want

00:14:35 ◼   ► to get started working on something.

00:14:37 ◼   ► And I think it's tricky when if you get a name for doing a certain kind of thing, then

00:14:45 ◼   ► it's slightly hard to necessarily break out of it.

00:14:50 ◼   ► I've made a lot of apps that are about taking some kind of health data and making an interesting

00:14:55 ◼   ► way to display it to people and show it to them.

00:14:59 ◼   ► I've solved that problem many, many times now.

00:15:02 ◼   ► And I'm getting very good at it, and I know what people like and how it works and technically

00:15:05 ◼   ► how to do it.

00:15:07 ◼   ► But it's tricky when that kind of gets boring in a way.

00:15:10 ◼   ► And so it's less exciting to do the next one or to solve that problem one more time.

00:15:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:15:18 ◼   ► And I mean, Overcast didn't have a way to change your account email address for its

00:15:24 ◼   ► first, I think, four years of existence because I have written so many stupid login forms

00:15:30 ◼   ► and password change forms and account change forms in my career.

00:15:34 ◼   ► The last thing I wanted to do was write an email change form.

00:15:37 ◼   ► And when I eventually decided to add, and I got emails about this from customers constantly

00:15:41 ◼   ► for four years.

00:15:43 ◼   ► And then when I finally made myself do it, I think it took like half a day to do change

00:15:49 ◼   ► email, change password, forgot about, like all the things I was missing.

00:15:53 ◼   ► I did it all on the website too, which was never there before.

00:15:56 ◼   ► Like the only way to reset your password before was on device.

00:15:59 ◼   ► So like I added all these things to the app and the website in like half a day and that

00:16:05 ◼   ► took away this major four year long source of customer frustration and support emails.

00:16:10 ◼   ► But for the first four years I couldn't motivate myself to do it because I'm like, I'm so bored

00:16:15 ◼   ► of writing dumb web forms.

00:16:17 ◼   ► Like this is the last thing I want to be doing is like account management and web forms.

00:16:21 ◼   ► But you know, sometimes you have to.

00:16:22 ◼   ► I mean, it's amazing how I think this is another one of my, one of my things where I feel like

00:16:27 ◼   ► there's just some work that you just don't want to do.

00:16:31 ◼   ► Like it can come into all manner of things.

00:16:34 ◼   ► Like I think what you're talking about was sort of like account maintenance, like basic

00:16:38 ◼   ► work that doesn't, it's like, it's useful, but it's not interesting.

00:16:43 ◼   ► Maybe it's sort of admin work or it's necessary.

00:16:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:47 ◼   ► It's like, or I mean, some of the times you get into accounting, things are like this

00:16:50 ◼   ► or testing or marketing.

00:16:51 ◼   ► Like there's just certain kinds of work that a lot of times I just don't want to do and

00:16:58 ◼   ► there's no one forcing me to do it.

00:17:00 ◼   ► You know, it's not like there's, you know, my boss being like, well, you know, I told

00:17:04 ◼   ► on Monday, I said, I needed you to do this and it's Friday.

00:17:06 ◼   ► You haven't done it.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Like if I just don't do it, well, I just don't do it.

00:17:10 ◼   ► And I guess I reap the cost of that.

00:17:13 ◼   ► But like in your case, you're having an increase in customer support, presumably because people

00:17:18 ◼   ► don't know how to reset their passwords or things like that.

00:17:21 ◼   ► But you feel that, but if it doesn't cross over the threshold where it's finally worth

00:17:26 ◼   ► actually doing, if it's work you just don't want to do, you will never be, or it's very

00:17:30 ◼   ► difficult to be motivated to do it.

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00:19:15 ◼   ► FM.

00:19:16 ◼   ► So I think another area of this that I think is worth unpacking, I think it's something

00:19:21 ◼   ► that is sometimes, it's overlooked perhaps just because sometimes it's kind of tricky

00:19:26 ◼   ► to talk about, I feel like is the way the impact that emotional state, family life,

00:19:31 ◼   ► physical health, mental health can impact your work and your productivity, that I think

00:19:38 ◼   ► it's sometimes, it would be nice to think of our work as like this thing that we do

00:19:45 ◼   ► in isolation, that I go and I put on my programmer hat, I sit in my programmer chair with my

00:19:50 ◼   ► programmer keyboard, and I do my programming.

00:19:52 ◼   ► And like when I'm in that mode, I'm Mr. Programmer, and I can just do my programmer

00:19:58 ◼   ► thing.

00:19:59 ◼   ► But in reality, the work we're doing is something that is done in a broader context

00:20:05 ◼   ► of our lives and is something that is dramatically impacted, I find, by what's going on around

00:20:12 ◼   ► us, whether that be your family situation, your personal life, like there's a variety

00:20:16 ◼   ► of things that can be distractions or motivational challenges there.

00:20:22 ◼   ► Your physical health can impact this in terms of obviously, you know, the acute version

00:20:27 ◼   ► of this where it's like you just you have the flu, so you can't work, but all the

00:20:30 ◼   ► way up to just in general, if your health isn't as good, if you're having trouble

00:20:36 ◼   ► in other parts of your health, it can be hard to work productively.

00:20:40 ◼   ► And then similarly with mental health, like in terms of if you're dealing with depression,

00:20:43 ◼   ► anxiety, those types of things, they can make and magnify challenges at work.

00:20:50 ◼   ► And I think those are the thing that's slightly, especially challenging with any of those types

00:20:55 ◼   ► of things is that I find it's hard for me to recognize them myself, or at least to recognize

00:21:03 ◼   ► them right away, where like there'll be times that I'm having trouble working, and

00:21:07 ◼   ► it's hard to be motivated.

00:21:09 ◼   ► And I keep, it's sort of the, especially on the mental health side, like it can become

00:21:13 ◼   ► very problematic where like I start beating myself up about being unproductive.

00:21:18 ◼   ► And it turns out it's because I'm feeling depressed, because I'm feeling anxious,

00:21:22 ◼   ► and feeling beating myself up about not working makes it worse.

00:21:27 ◼   ► And so I think that's something certainly that is good to talk, good to just mention

00:21:31 ◼   ► and to be, just understand that it's very likely that in our audience, there are many

00:21:35 ◼   ► people who have those types of challenges, and understand that it's entirely natural

00:21:39 ◼   ► and normal.

00:21:40 ◼   ► And I think it's something that gets better is the best thing that I've found is where

00:21:46 ◼   ► it's something that will, if you recognize it for what it is, in most of those areas,

00:21:53 ◼   ► your physical health and as well as your mental health, you can start taking steps towards

00:21:57 ◼   ► making it better for whatever that is.

00:22:00 ◼   ► If it's you need to lose some weight on the physical side, there are means and ways

00:22:03 ◼   ► to do that.

00:22:04 ◼   ► If you need, on the mental health side, sometimes it's, you need to talk to someone about

00:22:09 ◼   ► what's going on in your life, or go for a walk, or take more breaks, or whatever it

00:22:13 ◼   ► is.

00:22:14 ◼   ► There are ways to approach it, but I think it's important to be aware of it and to

00:22:18 ◼   ► not try and partition out your work as something that's divorced from how you are outside

00:22:25 ◼   ► of your work.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's largely one of the great benefits we have as people who work for ourselves

00:22:32 ◼   ► who don't necessarily have fixed schedules or required work hours.

00:22:38 ◼   ► Because lots of people, most people, have to just deal with any problem in their life,

00:22:46 ◼   ► any factor that's distracting them or holding them back or making it hard for them to get

00:22:51 ◼   ► work done, whether it's physical or mental or situational or stuff going on at home,

00:22:55 ◼   ► whatever it is.

00:22:57 ◼   ► Most people have to just plow through and go to work anyway, and it's really hard.

00:23:02 ◼   ► Most of us have been there before.

00:23:04 ◼   ► It's really hard to get through that when you have to go to a day job.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Part of the reason why indie life is so awesome is that we have the flexibility to not necessarily

00:23:15 ◼   ► work every day and not get fired.

00:23:19 ◼   ► If you need to take a little while to just put your work in low power mode, where you're

00:23:25 ◼   ► just doing the bare minimum to keep your business going and keep whatever is generating your

00:23:30 ◼   ► income, keep that running but not put a whole lot of new work into it.

00:23:35 ◼   ► You can go into low work mode for a little while to take care of some stuff that you

00:23:38 ◼   ► need to take care of.

00:23:40 ◼   ► If you need a little while to change something about your life or to deal with something

00:23:43 ◼   ► in your personal life, some family stuff comes up or whatever, you can do that as an indie.

00:23:48 ◼   ► And that's okay.

00:23:50 ◼   ► Not only is that allowed, but that's just using one of the benefits of the indie life.

00:23:57 ◼   ► So not only should you not feel bad about it, you should take advantage of it when necessary.

00:24:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:02 ◼   ► I think it's the same kind of thing.

00:24:04 ◼   ► I'm really enjoying hearing your views on a lot of these things because I think it's

00:24:08 ◼   ► very helpful to view many of these things as features and opportunities rather than

00:24:13 ◼   ► as problematic.

00:24:14 ◼   ► They're not bugs and drawbacks.

00:24:16 ◼   ► They're features and opportunities.

00:24:18 ◼   ► If you frame them in the right way, it's like so many of the things I find in indie

00:24:24 ◼   ► life are this tricky balance because you have so much choice that's empowering in terms

00:24:37 ◼   ► of what you can accomplish, but it's also terrifying in terms of the range of possibilities

00:24:42 ◼   ► that you have to deal with.

00:24:44 ◼   ► And I think there are in so many cases the best way out and the best way to just kind

00:24:51 ◼   ► of try and frame what you're doing as an opportunity.

00:24:55 ◼   ► How is this life that I—becoming an independent person is not an easy thing.

00:25:02 ◼   ► It's inevitably taken a tremendous amount of work to get there.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And risk.

00:25:06 ◼   ► And risk.

00:25:07 ◼   ► And you've had to really want it.

00:25:09 ◼   ► And part of why that works is because you get these upsides on the other end, but I

00:25:15 ◼   ► think it's so easy to forget that they're there and to forget that many of these things

00:25:21 ◼   ► are just opportunities and you can take advantage of them in totally different and interesting

00:25:25 ◼   ► ways than you would if you were stuck in a situation that you just have to keep performing

00:25:32 ◼   ► on a regular basis indefinitely, irrespective of your motivation, irrespective of your productivity.

00:25:38 ◼   ► And you can make that work, but it's problematic in other ways.

00:25:43 ◼   ► Also, from a different angle, too, you might not be—if you're an indie now, you might

00:25:50 ◼   ► not be an indie forever.

00:25:52 ◼   ► You might have to or want to go back to working for someone else at some point.

00:25:57 ◼   ► And so if you have things in your life you need to deal with, when you're an indie

00:26:02 ◼   ► is the most opportune time to deal with them, because you might not have that chance down

00:26:07 ◼   ► the road.

00:26:08 ◼   ► If you decide to take a job somewhere else down the road where you have to be working

00:26:10 ◼   ► there full time and everything else, you will have fewer chances down the road to address

00:26:15 ◼   ► issues that you need to address in your own life or at home or whatever else.

00:26:18 ◼   ► And so this is actually, if you're an indie, this is a good time to do that.

00:26:23 ◼   ► Not only should you not feel bad about it, you should really do it now because you might

00:26:27 ◼   ► have fewer opportunities later or it might be harder later.

00:26:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:26:31 ◼   ► No, I think that's an excellent point.

00:26:33 ◼   ► There is so much of what we have.

00:26:40 ◼   ► You can do whatever you want, which I guess is one of my other things that I find sometimes

00:26:44 ◼   ► challenging for motivation is the lack of direction that we have as independents, where

00:26:48 ◼   ► we can do anything.

00:26:49 ◼   ► So I have no idea what I should do next.

00:26:53 ◼   ► But there is something certainly empowering by that, of that sense that you can focus

00:26:59 ◼   ► on whatever is most important in your life to work on at that moment, potentially.

00:27:06 ◼   ► You can have a broader perspective of work isn't something that you do necessarily from

00:27:12 ◼   ► nine to five.

00:27:13 ◼   ► It's something that you do when it's the most important thing for you to be doing.

00:27:18 ◼   ► And if that most important thing in an actual broad, sort of big I important sense for you

00:27:26 ◼   ► is shifted somewhere else.

00:27:28 ◼   ► So as a result, you have no motivation for work.

00:27:32 ◼   ► It is lovely that you can focus on that other more important thing until work maybe boils

00:27:37 ◼   ► up to become more important to you, or you can take care of that other thing or however

00:27:41 ◼   ► that plays out.

00:27:42 ◼   ► It is a wonderful opportunity to actually work on tasks in actual importance order rather

00:27:49 ◼   ► than just in urgency order, where the work I do at my office is important or feels important

00:27:57 ◼   ► because it is urgent and I have to do it for someone else versus it's important because

00:28:01 ◼   ► it's what I need to do and what is best for me or my family or the people I care about

00:28:05 ◼   ► more generally.

00:28:06 ◼   ► - We are so fortunate in the situation that we're in, as I've said a few times already

00:28:10 ◼   ► in this episode, we're so fortunate in the flexibility that we have that I feel like

00:28:15 ◼   ► if you don't take advantage of that, you're almost wasting it.

00:28:18 ◼   ► Not that you should feel bad about that either, but the difference between urgent versus important,

00:28:24 ◼   ► there's lots of urgent stuff that comes up, things like a server being down or Apple making

00:28:29 ◼   ► some last minute change and your app breaks on the new version of the OS or something

00:28:32 ◼   ► like that.

00:28:33 ◼   ► We have urgent stuff that happens, but most of the stuff that we can choose to do or have

00:28:38 ◼   ► to do isn't urgent, so take advantage of that when you can.

00:28:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think too, and if you're Mr. Listener or Mrs. Listener or finding yourself

00:28:48 ◼   ► in a place that you're struggling with motivation, you're dealing with these kind of things,

00:28:53 ◼   ► and I think that it gets better.

00:28:55 ◼   ► - And we all do, we all have this problem.

00:28:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, this isn't like a imposter syndrome kind of a thing where you're gonna get found

00:29:02 ◼   ► out that you struggle with motivation like everyone else.

00:29:06 ◼   ► This is just part of the deal, and I think if anything, like this conversation with you,

00:29:11 ◼   ► Marco, it's reminded me of the sense that working towards becoming independent has tremendous

00:29:17 ◼   ► benefits.

00:29:19 ◼   ► Many of those come with drawbacks, but the reality is those benefits are the things that

00:29:23 ◼   ► allow us to really push through some of the challenges that we have because we have so

00:29:29 ◼   ► much more flexibility and so many tools at our disposal to deal with that.

00:29:33 ◼   ► And so it's like it'll get better, and then we'll hit another spurt where it's amazing

00:29:37 ◼   ► productivity and you feel awesome and it comes again, and at some point, know that it's gonna

00:29:43 ◼   ► swing back, so enjoy it while you got it, I suppose.

00:29:45 ◼   ► - And know that it's okay.

00:29:46 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:29:47 ◼   ► Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you next week.

00:29:49 ◼   ► Bye.

00:29:50 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]