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 developer based in Herndon, Virginia.

00:00:11 ◼   ► This is show number 101, and today is January 1st, 2013.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Happy New Year's.

00:00:17 ◼   ► All right, I figured I'd kick off the year with a, I guess you could call it a topical

00:00:21 ◼   ► topic for today, given that it's New Year's Day.

00:00:24 ◼   ► A lot of people start thinking about their new year, what they're going to do, and I'm

00:00:27 ◼   ► tempted to do a couple of shows like this.

00:00:29 ◼   ► who knows, I always say that at the beginning of these shows, then I hardly ever do. But

00:00:32 ◼   ► I'm going to talk today about what a lot of people would call work-life balance. That

00:00:37 ◼   ► term always kind of turns me off just because it's a strange thing. It puts your work and

00:00:43 ◼   ► your, I guess, your personal life in tension, I feel like, that you're kind of fighting

00:00:48 ◼   ► between those two. And I think there's putting them in tension and having them be almost

00:00:52 ◼   ► antagonistic isn't necessarily the right kind of viewpoint. And a lot of what I'm talking

00:00:57 ◼   ► about will apply mostly for people who have some amount of control over their work life,

00:01:03 ◼   ► I suppose, in terms of if you're an independent or if you're at least semi-independent, those

00:01:08 ◼   ► types of things.

00:01:09 ◼   ► If you have a very regimented job with a very regimented schedule where you have to be in

00:01:14 ◼   ► specific place at a specific time, maybe this isn't going to be as helpful.

00:01:17 ◼   ► But if you have any amount of control over your schedule, which according to this in

00:01:23 ◼   ► news I've been actually reading recently that is increasingly more and more and more employers

00:01:27 ◼   ► have you know, options for flex time working from home, those types of things. So it seems

00:01:31 ◼   ► like this is likely going to be broadly relevant. And I was coming up with kind of what I my

00:01:36 ◼   ► thoughts on this and kind of what I've done and how I have approached that. And it was

00:01:40 ◼   ► kind of an interesting thing because I ended up with three words all beginning with the

00:01:44 ◼   ► letter C. And so I have what I guess makes the perfect thing for a presentation or a

00:01:49 ◼   ► If I had a PowerPoint, this would be great.

00:01:51 ◼   ► So a little bit cheesy to have three words with the same letter, but that's where we

00:01:55 ◼   ► are, and so I'll get started.

00:01:57 ◼   ► So the first one I have is consciousness.

00:02:00 ◼   ► By that I mean, this is based on my own experience and from talking to a lot of people, a lot

00:02:05 ◼   ► of friends who are in similar situations.

00:02:08 ◼   ► It is impossible to end up with an ideal or a place where you're probably going to be

00:02:15 ◼   ► happy about the amount of time, the effort, and where your emotional energy is being spent

00:02:21 ◼   ► in a day without being conscious about where that effort is going and where that time is

00:02:27 ◼   ► going and being proactive and conscious and intentional about it.

00:02:31 ◼   ► It's just one of those things that, in my experience, more likely than not, unless you

00:02:36 ◼   ► have something dramatic going on on the home front, if left to its own devices, work will

00:02:41 ◼   ► slowly sort of devour all available time, and you'll be left with pouring yourself out

00:02:50 ◼   ► on a regular basis into your work, which may not necessarily be what you want.

00:02:55 ◼   ► If you have a family at home, you have a wife or kids, those types of things, or even just

00:02:59 ◼   ► other interests, hobbies, things that you in many ways would like to do, those constraints

00:03:05 ◼   ► are rarely going to be things that will proactively pull at you, in a way that work will almost

00:03:12 ◼   ► always do that. There's always the next thing to do. There's always something else that's

00:03:16 ◼   ► pressing for your time, opportunities that you need to work on, a boss that's nagging

00:03:20 ◼   ► at you. Whatever it is that's going to be pulling on you. If you're not conscious and

00:03:25 ◼   ► proactive about how you're going to spend your time, where you're going to be, where

00:03:30 ◼   ► you're going to pour yourself into on a daily basis, it's unlikely that you're going to

00:03:34 ◼   ► to end up where you want to be.

00:03:37 ◼   ► And the next concept, the next C, is constraint.

00:03:41 ◼   ► And this is really the reality for most

00:03:43 ◼   ► of what you have to think about is,

00:03:46 ◼   ► where can you draw lines around your time, around your energy,

00:03:51 ◼   ► around your effort?

00:03:52 ◼   ► And it's kind of coming at it from the obvious thing,

00:03:54 ◼   ► hopefully, but it's worth mentioning.

00:03:57 ◼   ► You're starting from a place of limited resources.

00:04:00 ◼   ► Your entire life is essentially a question

00:04:03 ◼   ► managing and compromising amongst limited resources, whether that's your time, your

00:04:09 ◼   ► energy, your, I guess you could, you differentiate your energy and your focus in terms of you

00:04:14 ◼   ► being able to be intellectually engaged, your money, all those kinds of things that you,

00:04:20 ◼   ► you have to build constraints between these things.

00:04:23 ◼   ► And this is, I think one of the things, especially for people who I know who start working from

00:04:28 ◼   ► home struggle with the most is drawing very strong constraints and lines around their

00:04:35 ◼   ► work.

00:04:36 ◼   ► It's very easy when you're working at home to find yourself working too much or working,

00:04:42 ◼   ► if not necessarily too much in terms of hours, but to be working too often.

00:04:47 ◼   ► By that I mean you kind of find yourself dabbling and dabbling all throughout the day.

00:04:53 ◼   ► You're constantly checking things, you're constantly kind of getting involved and thinking

00:04:57 ◼   ► about work and getting into it in a way that doesn't allow you to ever really turn off

00:05:03 ◼   ► and it doesn't allow you to really invest and put your time and energy into the things

00:05:07 ◼   ► that you may want to at home.

00:05:09 ◼   ► And so that's a really dangerous thing to kind of find your place.

00:05:12 ◼   ► And like I said, without being conscious, without putting constraints on your work,

00:05:17 ◼   ► it'll just keep growing, I find.

00:05:19 ◼   ► I mean, and obviously, I guess if maybe if you're a lazy—sort of like a lazy bones

00:05:22 ◼   ► who doesn't want to get any work done, then maybe that's not the case.

00:05:27 ◼   ► My guess is if you're the kind of person who's listening to a podcast about independent

00:05:32 ◼   ► software development, you're probably not that kind of person.

00:05:34 ◼   ► You're probably someone who is, who likes what they're doing and is trying hard to do

00:05:39 ◼   ► more and more of it.

00:05:40 ◼   ► And so it's important to be proactive about putting constraints in your time.

00:05:44 ◼   ► One of the most important things I ever did, I've been independent for years and years

00:05:48 ◼   ► now, one of the most important things I ever did was I put very strong hour caps on my

00:05:54 ◼   ► work basically.

00:05:55 ◼   ► And for the most part, I work 9 to 5.

00:05:59 ◼   ► There's a few exceptions to that and things, but for the vast majority of my days, probably

00:06:03 ◼   ► about 95% of days, I work between 9 and 5.

00:06:06 ◼   ► And there's nothing magical about 9 and 5.

00:06:09 ◼   ► It just kind of works out well for my family in terms of it works out well for my children's

00:06:13 ◼   ► schedules, for my wife's schedules, for when we have childcare, for them to come and help

00:06:17 ◼   ► my wife.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Like all those kinds of things line up well for kind of working 9 to 5.

00:06:23 ◼   ► And before I did that, my work life would kind of be this fluid thing that no one in

00:06:28 ◼   ► my family could kind of plan on or depend on.

00:06:31 ◼   ► And this was especially difficult when we had small children for my wife, where it's

00:06:34 ◼   ► undefined when I'm coming home, it's undefined when I'm going to work, and having that ambiguity

00:06:39 ◼   ► was just kind of putting stress and difficulty on my home life.

00:06:44 ◼   ► And so when we decided, "Okay, well, I'm going to work nine to five," and that's what I did.

00:06:49 ◼   ► It was rather remarkable in terms of it gave me permission, I think, during work to be

00:06:55 ◼   ► 100% focused on work in a way that, you know, if you're working an undefined schedule, it's

00:07:01 ◼   ► very easy for, especially when you're working at home, but even just in general, it's very

00:07:07 ◼   ► easy to be distracted by things, things that are often very worthwhile, things that are

00:07:10 ◼   ► very worthy, but things that are nevertheless going to be distracting you from your work.

00:07:16 ◼   ► And so if you have a certain amount of time

00:07:18 ◼   ► that you're allotting and saying, this is where I'm at work,

00:07:20 ◼   ► it's easier to say, no, I'm at work.

00:07:22 ◼   ► And you can kind of shut those out

00:07:24 ◼   ► because you know there's a definite time we

00:07:26 ◼   ► will be able to address them.

00:07:27 ◼   ► 5 o'clock, I'm all available.

00:07:30 ◼   ► And then on the flip side of that,

00:07:31 ◼   ► it allows you to really focus on the things outside of work

00:07:34 ◼   ► when you're not working.

00:07:35 ◼   ► It allows you to--

00:07:38 ◼   ► basically, other than when my servers or similar things

00:07:43 ◼   ► have problems, and I get an alert,

00:07:44 ◼   ► you know, an alert comes in that says, "Hey, your server's down," and I need to go and

00:07:47 ◼   ► address that. I pretty much turn off work from five to nine every day, you know, sort

00:07:53 ◼   ► of on those outside times. And I'm able to rest and to spend time with my kids and family

00:07:56 ◼   ► and wife and friends and so on in a way that is much better, I find, than if I didn't have

00:08:01 ◼   ► those constraints around myself. And then the last thing I want to talk about, the third

00:08:07 ◼   ► C, which is very related to constraint, is context. And this is something that is difficult

00:08:15 ◼   ► to make strong recommendations on. But moreover, what I can do is I can speak to my own experience.

00:08:20 ◼   ► And by context, what I'm talking about here is I think it's very important that you can

00:08:24 ◼   ► create a context, which is really just another word for place or work environment, however

00:08:29 ◼   ► you want to call it, the place that you are most productive, and to take that context

00:08:34 ◼   ► and move it or separate it as much as you can from the other contexts of your life.

00:08:42 ◼   ► So if you're familiar with kind of—there's a term in sort of computer engineering about

00:08:47 ◼   ► context switching, where you're in one context and you're switching to the next and switching

00:08:51 ◼   ► to the next and switching to the next, which is often a term applied to microprocessors.

00:08:56 ◼   ► But I find it very applicable to my life that you're kind of—you're in one place, you're

00:09:00 ◼   ► one zone, you're in one sort of line of thinking. And often the place that you're that where

00:09:05 ◼   ► you are, for me anyway, strongly, strongly informs that that when I met when I'm at my

00:09:10 ◼   ► office, in my fancy chair, looking at my nice setup with my the my exact right keyboard,

00:09:16 ◼   ► and I got my Microsoft 400 split format ergonomic, I got my black razor mouse, you know, that's

00:09:23 ◼   ► me in my in my productive context. When I'm at home, that context isn't there. And so

00:09:28 ◼   ► So I'm not worried about working.

00:09:31 ◼   ► And so what I find is it was very important for me as much as early as I could to separate

00:09:37 ◼   ► my work context from my not work context.

00:09:40 ◼   ► And so for me, actually, I go all the way to the extent that I rent office space just

00:09:44 ◼   ► down the road from my house, just a tiny little 90 square feet.

00:09:48 ◼   ► Essentially, it's a glorified closet, but I rent it as a separate space that I can come

00:09:52 ◼   ► into and I can do my work that's physically separated.

00:09:56 ◼   ► And before that, I used to, you know, I had essentially a place in my particular desk

00:10:02 ◼   ► in my office downstairs.

00:10:03 ◼   ► That was the work desk.

00:10:04 ◼   ► And we actually had a separate space, a separate orientation in that office that was for non-work

00:10:11 ◼   ► things.

00:10:12 ◼   ► That was for, you know, just doing regular household business in that office.

00:10:16 ◼   ► We found that very helpful.

00:10:17 ◼   ► There's something nice about having that physical place that I find when I'm sitting, when I

00:10:24 ◼   ► down, I'm able to focus more than I would if I just kind of grabbed my laptop, sat down

00:10:30 ◼   ► at the dining room table, and started working.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And similarly, you know, if I was doing my work at the dining room table, it would be

00:10:36 ◼   ► easy to get sucked back into that or pull out of it during the day.

00:10:41 ◼   ► And so it's important, I think, to have that strong sense of context, to draw those lines

00:10:46 ◼   ► between things and to try and not, as much as you can, blur the lines between that.

00:10:51 ◼   ► You know, it's like, if you're going to watch a movie, you should probably watch that in

00:10:54 ◼   ► your living room, your den, whatever it is in your house.

00:10:57 ◼   ► You're not going to want to be watching that on your computer, sitting down at your desk,

00:11:01 ◼   ► where you're going to be doing work.

00:11:02 ◼   ► These are just some of these things that I found that, in my experience, are really helpful

00:11:06 ◼   ► for kind of drawing those lines.

00:11:07 ◼   ► And at the end of the day, it's just a question of trying to decide what you want to accomplish

00:11:13 ◼   ► and how, you know, what are the things that are important to you.

00:11:18 ◼   ► You could talk about it as priorities, you could talk about it in a lot of ways, but

00:11:22 ◼   ► it's trying to make sure that you're being very thoughtful and introspective about how

00:11:29 ◼   ► far would you want to allow your work to bleed into your overall life in terms of the energy

00:11:35 ◼   ► that you have.

00:11:36 ◼   ► You wake up every morning with a certain amount of energy.

00:11:39 ◼   ► How much of it are you willing to spend on the acquisition of money and respect from

00:11:46 ◼   ► your peers, basically, which is largely what work is for most people. And you have to decide

00:11:51 ◼   ► that and you have to be conscious about that. I remember my wife and I had a conversation

00:11:56 ◼   ► early on when I was independent about the tricky part of it's easy. It's like, what

00:12:01 ◼   ► are we trying to do here? Because if I want to, it's like, if the goal is to make as much

00:12:05 ◼   ► money as possible, then you make a lot of very different choices and you can spend a

00:12:10 ◼   ► tremendous amount of time. If I wanted to make as much money as possible, there's a

00:12:15 ◼   ► a good chance I would just do hourly consulting

00:12:17 ◼   ► and I would work 80 hours, 100 hours a week,

00:12:21 ◼   ► and at a solid hourly rate, you could make a ton of money

00:12:26 ◼   ► that way, but that was a decision we decided.

00:12:29 ◼   ► No, the goal is not to make as much money as possible.

00:12:31 ◼   ► The goal is to feel like you're applying yourself

00:12:35 ◼   ► and using your gifts and talents

00:12:37 ◼   ► in a reasonable and responsible way,

00:12:40 ◼   ► but at the end of the day, it's almost like

00:12:43 ◼   ► to work the smallest amount possible

00:12:45 ◼   ► to provide for the lifestyle that we would like.

00:12:50 ◼   ► And then beyond that, to enjoy, to seek to limit

00:12:54 ◼   ► the amount of energy that is put into work

00:12:57 ◼   ► that could be put into other things,

00:12:58 ◼   ► other things that I personally would value a bit more

00:13:01 ◼   ► in terms of the time spent with my wife

00:13:04 ◼   ► and with my kids, with my family, those types of things,

00:13:08 ◼   ► or just making myself a better person

00:13:10 ◼   ► in terms of personal development.

00:13:12 ◼   ► So anyway, it's a bit of a hand-ravey thing, but it's technically a holiday so I can take

00:13:19 ◼   ► a vacation from the more technical topics.

00:13:21 ◼   ► And hopefully it's interesting.

00:13:23 ◼   ► I brought this up on the first because I thought it would be interesting to have something

00:13:28 ◼   ► to think about, something for you to think about as you're going through this next year.

00:13:33 ◼   ► Look back on 2012 and say, "Am I happy with the way that's gone and the way I've separated

00:13:39 ◼   ► my time and my focus and my energy?

00:13:41 ◼   ► Am I happy with that?"

00:13:42 ◼   ► If you are, fantastic.

00:13:44 ◼   ► If you're not, well, this is as good a time

00:13:47 ◼   ► as any to do something about.

00:13:48 ◼   ► You even get a--

00:13:50 ◼   ► there's a new digit at the end of the year, which apparently

00:13:53 ◼   ► is motivating and helpful to some people.

00:13:56 ◼   ► All right, that's it for today's show.

00:13:58 ◼   ► As always, if you have questions, comments, complaints,

00:14:01 ◼   ► concerns, I'm on Twitter @_davidsmith.

00:14:04 ◼   ► I'm on app.net @davidsmith.

00:14:06 ◼   ► There's an email address for the show on the website for it,

00:14:10 ◼   ► developingperspective.com.

00:14:12 ◼   ► And otherwise, I hope you guys have a good new year.

00:14:15 ◼   ► Have a good and blessed 2013.

00:14:17 ◼   ► And I'll probably just mention it again.

00:14:20 ◼   ► I really appreciate it whenever anybody asks questions.

00:14:23 ◼   ► That is a great place for me to go

00:14:25 ◼   ► to collect topics for the show, to give me

00:14:28 ◼   ► thoughts and insights.

00:14:29 ◼   ► So if you have anything that you're thinking about related

00:14:31 ◼   ► to development, related to being independent,

00:14:33 ◼   ► related to anything like that, just let me know.

00:14:35 ◼   ► In any one of those means, I just mentioned,

00:14:38 ◼   ► just because it really helps me kind of guide the show

00:14:42 ◼   ► to where it's most helpful.

00:14:44 ◼   ► All right, have a great day.

00:14:45 ◼   ► Happy coding.

00:14:46 ◼   ► And I'll talk to you later this week.