June Goals & recap of May Goals

Ok, I’m a few days late with my June goals. However, I’ve been thinking about them for the last few days and wasn’t ready to put them in writing until today. Here they are:

1. APPS – Get app #3 into the App Store, both free and paid versions. Find a developer for app #4. Finish artwork for app #4.
2. LEARN – continue iOS development book (this will fill in the time after everything I can do on goal #1 each day).
3. BLOG – blog each day about my progress the previous day.
4. PLAN – spend a few minutes each night planning what I want to accomplish tomorrow.
5. BALANCE – spend time each day thinking about what I’m grateful for.

The recap of my May goals:

1. APPS – Get app #3 into the App Store [could have made this without the strategic shift in the game that happened near the end of the month… in hindsight, it’s better to not make this goal and have a better app with more potential than to make the goal with a worse app].
2. LEARN – continue iOS development book (this will fill in the time after everything I can do on goal #1 each day). [Did a little bit in this book – not a lot since I was spending most of my time working on the app #4 and other app ideas].
3. BLOG – blog each day about my two hours the previous day. [Did not achieve this goal – my blogging faltered a bit].
4. BALANCE – spend time each day thinking about what I’m grateful for. [Did achieve this].

May goals & Friday launch of app #2

I’m getting excited for the launch of app #2 on the App Store – Friday is the big day!

On to my goals for May:

1. APPS – Get app #3 into the App Store
2. LEARN – continue iOS development book (this will fill in the time after everything I can do on goal #1 each day).
3. BLOG – blog each day about my two hours the previous day.
4. BALANCE – spend time each day thinking about what I’m grateful for.

Review of April goals

Since today’s the last day of April, it’s time to review monthly goals:

1. APPS – get app #2 into the App Store. [Done – would have published in April if I had not manually delayed til Friday].
2. LEARN – continue iOS development book (this will fill in the time after everything I can do on goal #1 each day). [Doing well on this – through 250 pages in the tutorial book. Also, I spent some time doing some game building via Matt Heaney’s youtube tutorials].
3. BLOG – blog each day about my two hours the previous day. [Done.]
4. BALANCE – spend time each day thinking about what I’m grateful for. [Done.]

 

Since app #2 was approved for the App Store, I released the final milestone payment to the developer. I guess that technically I could have waited until it goes live on Friday, but since I’m manually holding the release until then (the app would have published yesterday if I had not delayed it), I figured it would be the right thing to do to pay him as he did was he signed up for on the app and the only reason it’s not live right now is that I manually delayed it.

Last night – date night

Last night was date night, so I didn’t get in my normal two hours. I did spend some time earlier watching a Stanford CS lecture (link below). I will try to make up my missed hours sometime over the weekend. Not much else today, but want to make sure I’m posting daily for my goals and to keep me accountable. 

March Goals … Fixed App #1!

My long-overdue goals for March:

1. APPS – fix app #1 and get it into the App Store.
2. LEARN – complete 30 Day App Challenge. (If extra time, begin iOS development book.)
3. BLOG – blog each day about my two hours the previous day.
4. BALANCE – spend time each day thinking about what I’m grateful for.

As I’ve discussed a lot in my blog posts, I’m searching for the right balance between building apps (possibly through outsourcing) and learning to program myself. My monthly goals will reflect a balance between these two (#1 vs #2 goals). The general idea is that I want to be producing apps (either via outsourcing or by myself) while learning more programming myself.

Finally got back to my normal evening schedule yesterday… and during my two hours last night, I began by getting my March goals done and written. Then, I got back to work with my #1 goal in focus.

Within about an hour, I was able to get my app fixed! Woohoo! What a great feeling. It was truly a rush to see my app working again.

Not sure exactly what was wrong, but I know that the app originally broke when I tried to insert my icon and launch images. Luckily, I had saved out a prior, working version of the app just prior to image insertion, which I believe is a good general practice with any digital work (version control!). So I was quickly able to go back to that version and start over on image insertion.

I recalled that Buzztouch had something in their training videos about how to insert icon images, so I went back to find that video and followed their process (instead of just drag/dropping them in Xcode). Then, I added a Buzztouch plug-in for the launch image and drag/dropped in the different resolutions of the launch image in Xcode. It was still compiling correctly and not throwing any errors… so I ran it and it worked perfectly in the simulator! I ran it through all the different devices in the simulator and it was looking perfect, except the iPads which had the page scrolled down at launch. Must have been something I did wrong in image insertion that wasn’t jiving with the buzztouch code.

I don’t currently have an iPad, so I uploaded my app into app.io which allows you to run your app through another simulator that is supposedly more real than the iOS simulator in Xcode (read about this on buzztouch forum a few nights ago). The iPad simulator ran perfectly on app.io, so I think the app is ready to go! It looks great and the functionality is all there. Tonight I will run it on my iPhone and see how it looks. If it works well, then I’ll begin the upload process.

I’ve been making excuses

Yesterday I spent my time watching a lecture from the Stanford course (a link to these courses is found in an earlier post on my blog).

Additionally, I found the 30 Day App Challenge website, which looks interesting. The website is pretty ugly, and I wasn’t really sold on this until I watched the 2nd and 3rd videos. I like the approach they use to market research, which funnels out apps from big companies and apps that are using large advertising budgets to drive downloads. Indie app developers need good ideas to drive downloads since the advertising budgets are limited.

I’m going to make my March goals up tonight – I know, I know… it’s March 6th! With family in town, haven’t had enough time at home to sit and get through them since we’ve been entertaining and allowing the kids to stay up late, so my normal two hours hasn’t been happening.

As I write this, I realize that I could have found time earlier to plan my goals… using time during a different part of the day. I feel a bit lazy now following this realization.

One of my weaknesses (or strengths, depending on how you look at it…) is that I am good at making excuses. I can’t make excuses in my business though, because once I start to make excuses they spread like cancer and soon enough, I won’t be making any progress in the business because stuff happened and I made excuses.

At times, there are valid things that happen and are truly higher priority, so it’s maintaining a balance and a fair judgment on these things. Most importantly, we will make time to still get things done in a more creative way, reallocating time.

It’s good to have these realizations about ourselves every once in a while… they help us to correct course and make changes where necessary. From my perspective on my own business, goals are so important that they need to be prepared on-time and with good focus to keep my efforts focused on the most important things. I don’t have enough time to waste any of it.

To learn from this realization, I’m making the personal commitment that my goals will be planned and posted by the first day each month, with no excuses.

Family in town, business took a backseat

Last night I didn’t have time to work on the business with family still in town. Hopefully will have time tonight. Unfortunately, I can’t create more hours in the day! One of my priorities is family and we don’t get to see these family members often, as they live on the other side of the country which means that the business was not priority #1 yesterday.

I don’t want to get to the end of my life with a ton of money and not know my family, because I didn’t take advantage of the relatively few opportunities we have to spend quality time together.

I’m still focused on the business and if things slow down, even with family in town, I sit down and grab my laptop and get back to work.

I will be posting my March goals and continuing to de-bug my app next chance I get.

Getting closer to submitting first app to Apple

Last night was date night, but I was able to sneak in a few minutes of time finalizing my Apple developer ID registration. I registered as a business, for the business entity I had created last year for some other entrepreneurial endeavors. Glad that’s all done. There’s a ton of stuff to learn about iTunes Connect and the details of submitting an app to Apple.

Also, I finished registering all my info with Admob so it’s all setup and ready to go. I believe I should be able to create a new campaign now.

Running out of time on my February goal to get my first app into the app store. I may leave the ads out of it so I can submit sooner. Then, I may continue to work on getting the ads integrated after I get the app in the store.

To finish the app, I just need the icons which my wife is working on.

I hate the feeling that I’m making excuses

This sounds like I’m making excuses, but hear me out. Yesterday was a busy day… my wife and I took our kids to an open house for the new LDS temple in Gilbert, AZ in the afternoon. After that, we went out to eat, which took forever. By the time we got home and got the kids in bed, I was about an hour into my normal two-hour window. And I was worn out from carrying our three-year old around when his legs weren’t fast enough to keep up with the tour at the open house. So last night was a difficult one for my two hours to work on the business… when I finally sat down with my laptop, I quickly booted up the buzztouch website, which I’m using to build my first app this month, and got back to the iOS app tutorials (there are nine… about 10-15 min each, plus a 10-question quiz at the end of each). I only got through one completely, and during the second one, I fell asleep.

What is going on? I feel like a lazy sack of turd falling asleep like this. That is twice this week already! It eats me up inside when I feel like I just lost an opportunity to advance my business because I fell asleep during my only available time. I think to myself, “Great… this means I’ll have to work in an office job for one more day now…”

I hate the feeling that I am making excuses. I’m hard on myself when I don’t achieve my goals. And if I keep falling asleep during my two hours, I’ll obviously not reach my goals. The feeling that my goals are slipping away is one of the worst feelings I have experienced. So I need to assess what is really going on.

Why do I keep falling asleep during my two hours? Three options that may explain it:

1. (Worst case) Is it lack of desire to achieve my goals?
2. (Nearly worst case) Is it that I don’t hate my office job enough to ignite my passion to build a way out?
3. (Possible case) Is it lack of sleep?

1. Lack of desire. This would be the worst case because lack of desire means that I won’t succeed and should just give up now. I’m not going to allow that to happen. This is too important to me. Guess I can answer this with a firm “No”.

2. Lack of hatred for my office job. This would be pretty bad also… I can’t imagine working in an office job for the next 30-40 years. I’d rather be run over by a truck tomorrow than entertain the thought of this. Guess the answer to this one is “No” also. Phew.

3. Lack of sleep. Quite possibly the reason I keep falling asleep at night. I can’t remember the last time I got eight hours of sleep in one night. With four kids, a full-time job, a commute, a yard to maintain, etc etc… even having a supportive wife doesn’t overcome lack of sleep sometimes. It’s hard for me to accept the fact that I need more sleep… I guess it means I’m not superhuman yet. This is the answer, and I know it. I may just need to be more creative and flexible about making time to work on the business. Today, I woke up extra early and finished up my tutorials before starting my day job. I guess that will work for now, but I have a feeling this will be a continuing saga… stay tuned.

Learning a Few Things Upfront Will Save Money Later On..

For my two hours last night, I jumped back into the buzztouch tutorials. I’m gearing up to make my first app this month, hopefully sooner than later. I’ve already got content lined up, thanks to my gracious wife. The app will be simple, with just a table of contents with links to different parts of the content. However, I’m learning a lot already about how to create an app and how the components work together.

I also spent some time registering for a Chartboost account and researching how it works. This will be one of the advertising networks I will use.

I continue to fight the temptation to purchase an app or source code and wait until I get through my first app on my own. After all, if I purchased some source code today with the intention of re-skinning it, I don’t know enough yet to know where to place the new graphics within the app and how to get the app into the store. I’d rather figure these things out with an app that I made myself, not an app that I paid for. I’m assuming that my first app may not be as smooth as my second app. Additionally, I can’t use my Dunn & Bradstreet business id for another 12 days to finish registering for my Apple developer id, so no rush to buy source code today. However, after falling asleep the night before last during my two hours, I’m glad to see that I’m still extremely motivated to get this business moving, and fast.