Month: October 2014

A few weeks ago there was some discussion online about hiring virtual personal assistants to help offload non-essential business tasks. Around that same time a Twitter user messaged me (and quite a few other indie devs) asking what sort of business tasks we would consider outsourcing. I’m pretty sure this industrious @replier was just looking for job leads, but it did cause me to stop and consider what parts of my business would I be comfortable delegating to an assistant. The short answer is, not much. For developers of a consumer-oriented product I think there might be a strong possibility …

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I often find that constraints, real or artificial, can be a huge motivation and productivity boost when I find myself stalled on a project or piece of work. Forcing yourself to work within a specific limitation can cause you to find a creative solution in a direction you might otherwise never consider. In my own work, I find time constraints the most useful. When I don’t know where to start developing or writing, I’ll often force myself to do something – no matter how small or tangential – to move the work along for thirty minutes or an hour. The …

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I want to give a big thumbs up and a hug to everything in this fabulous post by Paul Kim. I missed it back in August when this discussion was initially happening but came across it on Gus’s blog this morning. Paul writes about his expectations starting out with Hazel and what he’s discovered looking back on his success. This portion specifically speaks to my (moderate) success and what I’ve learned: But it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t overnight. A common sentiment I see among a lot of new devs is that if they aren’t living full-time off their app …

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