[Saadia] Side Projects and Social Media

An approach to making time for side projects. Maybe we should be on X after all.

An async podcast by Saadia Carbis and Joshua Wold.

Chapters

• 0:00 Finding a space on social media
• 2:53 Password managers
• 3:42 A strategy for staying motivated on side projects
• 5:37 Dungeons & Dragons

Transcript

0:00

Hi, welcome to Async. This is Saadia, and Async is a back-and-forth conversation between Joshua and myself about technology, app development, and remote work. So, let's start with some follow-up from your previous episode. One of the main pieces of follow-up that I have for you is about social media. We have been talking a little bit, it's a little bit meta, about how to reach an audience when we're not on social media, because a lot of our heroes in this space used Twitter and use other platforms to find their audience, find their crowd. And we're really not able to do that, because we're, just in general, not huge fans of social media. We don't like what it does to our brains, and we don't enjoy being on these platforms. We encourage everybody, even our listeners, to try to kick the habit, if you haven't already. You know me, Joshua, I think of Instagram a lot like I think about cigarettes. I think that they're really similar. So, how can we reach that audience? Well, I've decided over the last week or so, thinking about it, that I think we should have accounts in social media spaces. Just because we don't engage, doesn't mean we can't have an account. And I came across a profile on Twitter, I can't remember whose it was, but they said in their profile that this is a write-only account, and they'd clearly set up some sort of automation to be able to send directly from their blog post or RSS feed into Twitter. So, I'm going to start doing that for my personal blog. And I think we can also do it for async, if you'd like. Because, and listeners, if this is a challenge that you face, maybe this is a solution there too. Maybe it's okay to have write-only accounts. Maybe that's something we can normalize. Because, let's face it, not very many people use RSS feeds. It's very niche. Lots of people, though, get updates and news from social spaces. They use those spaces as an RSS feed, as a feed to get news and updates and information. So, perhaps having a write-only feed there isn't so bad. And if we can find ways of automating the process so that we don't have to ever have the app installed on our phone, we can do it all from our computers and have it just press a button and go boop, boop, boop. Even better, if we can just automatically do it when it detects a new episode, then I think that's the way to go. More follow-up on passwords. I've been using Apple passwords since family sharing came out for it. And I think it's just fine. I don't understand why... I've never heard, actually, of people having problems with it. I don't understand why you wouldn't use it. Just switch to Apple passwords. It does everything. The interface isn't quite as beautiful as 1Password, but also I found 1Password to be a bit buggy at times. And having to install extensions and things like this is just not ideal. So, get out of 1Password into Apple passwords. I think that's the way to go. Even... I ran a Windows PC for a while and I still had all my Apple passwords synced over there. You can still do it that way. All right. Side projects. You asked me how to make time for them. This is hard. And finding time to work on side projects is a huge, huge challenge. And it's something I've struggled with in the past and still struggle with. But for me, I think the hardest part is context switching. It's like finishing your day and then switching context to this other mode, to this other side project. So, my advice, since you asked for it, is if you've got a side project and you really want to prioritize it, take a day off work. Schedule in a full day. Have it in the back of your mind as you go into bed the previous day that, oh, this is what I'm going to be working on all day. Not just a few hours. Not just a little bit here and there. But spend a whole day on it. If you've got co-creators, then try to align somewhat with them. If you can, it'd be great if you could all be working on it around the same time. It can still be asynchronously. But if you get blocked, you know, maybe it might be nice. At least if your co-creators can be there to unblock you a little bit. And if they can make a similar commitment to you at a similar time, you know, within a few days, then that reinforces the fact that you're not the only one working on it. Because that can be demotivating. And it might be just enough momentum to get you all excited about it moving forward. Just enough to get that wheel turning. And before you know it, you know, you're scheduling another day off. Or maybe you're a little more motivated to just update that one little thing. I really enjoyed listening to your robotics story. That was really cool. I've just been camping myself over this last weekend. And we went camping with our Dungeons & Dragons crew. Now, I don't play. I'm not a player. I am a dungeon master. And I'm a dungeon master for a group of five teenagers. And, man, I think I'm going to write more about this. I'm thinking more about this. But Dungeons & Dragons is so, so good for everybody. But especially for teenagers as they're working through the who am I sort of phase of their life. And it was really nice to be there as like these kids. It wasn't just D&D the whole time. You know, they went off and had a swim at the beach and went off exploring together and sitting around in tents having conversations. They were forming these core memories, you know. And it was so nice as a parent to be there as the kids were connecting and to connect myself with the other parents. But it struck me that I can only do that because I work asynchronously. I could get up early and do some work in the morning. I could do a little bit of work later on. But I can just say yes to these sorts of opportunities as they come up. Because my kids homeschool, when somebody says, oh, can you do this? Can you be available for this? Our availability is we got so many more opportunities because I work asynchronously. And it is, it's so good. I couldn't, could, I think I'd really struggle going back to a job where I was required to be in front of my computers at certain times of the day. And it's not just the work-life balance and the nice to have and the low stress and work from home. You know, all of that's good. But it's the opportunities that come up. And it just so happens that, like, another dad was there because he actually scheduled time off his regular job. But there was other parents who just couldn't make it because they had to work. And that was disappointing for them and for the kids. And they really missed out. So I'm just trying to say asynchronous work lifestyle is the best lifestyle ever.