Hey, this is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps! Now today, I want
to talk about how important focus is for app developers.
Alright. So, a lot of times in these videos, I'd like to show off my office.
I'd like to move the camera around a little bit, show different parts of it, so
like anice place I get to go work. But there's this huge problem with this
office. And that's that it overlooks like a busy shopping area. And so,
sometimes, you get a lot of - lots of people walking through, but sometimes you
get people like performing on the street. It's either somebody with - it's never
like a normal instrument like a guitar - it's always a like a Mandolin, steel
drums - steel drums drive me crazy - but the worst... the worst one is the Bagpipes.
He just started like 10 minutes ago, so, I'm sitting here working, just thinking
about how cool things are. It's a nice day...it ain't stopping. Alright, it's a nice
day and the guy with the Bagpipes comes out. But other than that, it's a
perfect office. Let me just close the window here, just a second...
That hasn't made much of a difference. I don't know if you, guys, can still hear it,
but I could hear it. So anyway, one of the best things I did was move into an
office about a year and a half ago. The longest time I was working from
home, and I'd always have to have like a certain desk in someplace where I can go
and work and focus. Something I could just focus on the work that I
do.And sometimes, if there's background noise like this, I'll put on
music or you know, with kids playing in the next room, all this kind
of stuff. Put on music usually like the kind of music that would drown things
out. But it all got a bit difficult. And one of the things that's really
important - oh, if you do - if you do client work especially, and you do
the code yourself, and you also meet with clients and everything, you
have to like really be careful about interruptions. Or you have to like really
marshal interruptions. A lot of times you'll get these - this is one of the
problems with working at home. You know, I love my family but I found
that it got really difficult in the house when I'm working. I'm like, "Please
don't bother me. I'm working." When really it's not a - it's not a workplace. It's a
home. And the got really difficult for - God, is that driving you
crazy? I kind of started out today with a little bit of a headache and now it's
just getting worse! So anyway, after a while, I started to realize that my
house should be a home. It should be a place where everybody can play and
laugh and be joyful, and you know, listen to the TV too loud or turn the radio up
too loud all that kind of stuff. But it became this place for us like, "Hey, I gotta
make a phone call. Everybody be quiet. Or please don't bother me. I'm working on
this kind of stuff. " It's a - it's difficult when you're trying to keep
your family relationships and everything good. When you also have those kind of
things like you have that, you're torn between I've got to work on this
project, but I've also got, you know, I also want to have a good relationship
with my family, all this kind of stuff. So, moving into the office was
something that really helped. One of the nice things - I gave you a tour
of the office last year, last summer I think, but and it's, you know, occasionally
I move things around a little bit. But it's a - it's just a really nice
place to have all my stuff, especially as a developer. Now, I've worked with other
developers like when contracting and stuff that would just - then we work
from home on the couch which it sounds really good, but it's really - for me, I've
always found it difficult to work on the couch, not because the distractions, just
because it's nice to have everything laid out the way you want it. And one of
the nice - one the best things about having an office to move into was that it, you
know, like when I could just set up everything exactly the way I want. I
could just leave everything at night, come back, it's exactly the way that I
wanted when I first left it. Not to, you know,
tidy up unless a client comes by. If I want to try to
get some new monitors, all that kind of stuff, it just kind of does. So, for those
of you who are working from home and you're working for yourself,
take a look at offices in your area. It was just something that hadn't really
occurred to me because I thought, I kind of felt like a poser
looking for an office, like I'm trying to be this important business man by going
I've got my office out there. But it was really - it was almost like it was
just it was my Fortress of Solitude most of the time. So, anyway, I'm sorry
this video is gonna be brief today. It's just it is what it is.
Sometimes we get interruptions like this. That's it for today though. I will talk
to you, guys, tomorrow.