This is! Overpass Insights my name is Eric and I
make apps now today I want to talk about procrastination and the app developer
okay so today let's talk a little bit about procrastination this is a question over the
years on the live stream I get this from time to time you know I've got it in the comments
you know how do you deal with procrastination as an app developer and my answer has always
been sometimes I get over it and sometimes I don't you know this is one of the things that's really
difficult when you're working on your own projects and one of the benefits of doing client projects
if you're doing a plot a project for a client or for somebody else or you're working in an office
you have to deliver you have to get things done but when you're working on your own applications
or your own creative projects whether that be you know writing a Blog doing YouTube videos
making apps all this kind of stuff it's really easy to push that aside and do something else
and I'm like I'm prone to that as much as anybody else is in fact a few weeks ago yeah I'm just like
it was a Saturday afternoon perfect opportunity I had nothing to do and it was a perfect opportunity
to fire up this computer and start working on my own project which I've been picking up and
putting down again and again but then I thought I'm gonna go do some research so and go to the I'm
just gonna go to the bookstore maybe I'll find a good book and I got this book here which is called
uh start now get perfect later by Rob Moore it's a really good book it's all about procrastination
and when I when I read through it one of the things he talks about is it you know some people
consider themselves to be procrastinators oh you don't understand I'm a procrastinator so I was
like but we're all procrastinators every single one of us and he talks about this example of him
as he's writing the book he sees a bunch of boxes in the corner of his office and he just he has to
go break down those boxes even though he's never done that before right and and as I'm reading this
book I realize the very Act of reading this book was a way for me to procrastinate from a project
that I should have been working on right something that we all we all deal with um you know we all
procrastinate especially when we have something like sometimes we have that motivation we just
jump right in everything just goes smoothly and you don't want to it's like someone has to pry you
from the keyboard but a lot of the time times just to just get started like I got this API issue and
you know it feels like I've tried everything and I've spent hours on stack Overflow and you just
fire up the computer and then after a while you got this learned helplessness like I'm not going
to find the answer so whatever and then you just sort of you know if you don't stick with it that's
just gonna fade away just float away and you know and we procrastinate with different things for me
I procrastinate well there's so much good I mean we're bombarded with stuff that can distract us
like you know it could be different people it could be television there's so many good
television shows out there it could be working out like I like one of the things working out
is a weird one because it's healthy and you get a lot of compliments like hey yeah you're literally
looking fit and you're like yeah thanks but I've been hitting that gym hard because of this
computer over here and this project that I should be working on you know from my own project I'm
like uh I think I'll go to the gym yeah a Gym's a good thing that's a healthy way but it's still
it's procrastination right over the years I've read lots of books on productivity I mean these
are you know just some of the ones on my bookshelf I got so many like again I procrastinate by
reading more books which pretty much say the same thing just you know this one there's one called
productivity ninja you know getting things done is a great one right but one of the things one
of the books that um again years ago I read this and sometimes I'll pick it up and read it again
you know further analysis by paralysis by analysis is a real thing so this is really
good book I've talked about this before you've probably heard it before it's called The War
of Art which is a play on The Art of War by Stephen Pressfield everyone talks about this
but in this book, he talks about the resistance which is like any time you try to do anything
creative like whether you know he talks about whether you want to get you know ABS or write a
book or whatever you know the resistance sneaks in and starts saying either it fills you with
perfectionism or some other task that you know needs to get done right away you know like for
me it's like oh you know I haven't been to the gym yet today I really need to get down there that's
like is that the most important thing I could be doing like six months from now would be like you
know maybe I'll have abs that would be kind of cool but you know I could have an app I could
have abs or an app and you know a lot of the times I'll go for it yeah let's work out let's let's go
do some ab exercises and it's just another way of procrastinating I'm putting this out there
because you know I have produced some stuff in the past and I but I've also am just as susceptible
susceptible to procrastination as everybody else is like if you look at the channel here like the
videos have become less and less frequent because of oh I turned a camera on but oh yeah that's
you know I was going to talk about this one thing but oh is that really good enough to make a video
about well as you know and then you still start to talk yourself out of it and in the end you
do nothing right so you know if if you are gonna read one book again not to procrastinate this is a
really good one the world of art you have to think every time you sit at that keyboard every time you
start that new project every time you pick up that project where you have a little bit
of a resistance in because you're like whatever something's not connecting properly or some bit
of code is not working the way it should always realize that you're always fighting the resistance
the resistance is always there you know it's it's all around us we got so much quality distraction
around us more than ever in human history and if you're gonna create something you have to realize
that you're always battling against that so anyway I just thought I'd share some of my thoughts on
that I've been thinking about it a lot lately you know uh and so I'm gonna so as soon as I finish
this video I'm gonna turn around I'm gonna work on this damn project because I'm gonna force myself
to do it because dude man it's been too long anyway hey thanks for liking and subscribing
all that kind of stuff uh join us on our Discord server if you guys want to talk to other app
developers just like yourself and that is it for today I'll talk to you guys again next time