Full-Time Indie iOS Dev and Creator of Blackbox: A Top Dev Interview With Ryan McLeod

Focus

Procrastination is a real problem for most developers. Can you tell me how you focus on the day ahead?

Music is a good form of battling procrastination for Ryan.

Music is a good form of battling procrastination for Ryan.

I’m always experimenting with new tools and techniques to focus—exercise, good music, and coffee are my main weapons—but it’s a constant battle and learning process.

Generally I avoid procrastination by creating stress for myself! I know this is not the healthiest method, but it worked well for me when my savings were dwindling so we’re familiar frienemies.

My biggest form of procrastination is getting myself really lost in the weeds on arguably unnecessary features and detail. Before I know it a week has passed, and I’ve finished one feature but learned to make solar plots accurate to a degree no one will ever notice. I think this attention to detail is what makes the game in a way but it has to be balanced with shipping.

Reading reviews and emails from players is one way I derive positive motivation to get to work and remember to zoom out to focus on what really matters.

Do you use any tools to manage your daily tasks?

In general I plan things very loosely but I do try to keep lists of daily task that I can strike off (if for no reason other than to allow myself to feel somewhat accomplished at the end of the day). Right now I’m in love with:

• Things 3 for planning my weeks/days
• Bear to write long form things
• GitHub Issues to keep track of bugs and feature
• RescueTime to track my unproductive time
• Gyroscope to help visualize on the rough metrics of my week

How do you prioritize what new features to add into your apps?

I try to strike a balance between things that keep players satisfied, keep the lights on, and keep me entertained as a developer. If I could just build puzzles 24/7 I would—I have a long backlog of ideas—but I always have to take two steps back to:

• fix bugs
• keep up with hardware/software changes
• answer messages
• take time to solve important problems like “where are new players getting stuck and giving up”

These all need to be resolved before I can work on new things.

Where To Go From Here?

And that concludes our Top App Dev Interview with Ryan McLeod. A huge thanks to Ryan for sharing his journey with the iOS community :]

We hope you enjoyed reading about Ryan’s inspiring story at being an iOS indie app developer. In the end, being completely different on the App Store seems to be the key to success in Ryan’s case.

Ryan’s special eye for detail and desire to be different really stands out and has made him & Blackbox Puzzles a real success. I think taking some of the tips and advice to heart could really help you in making the next successful App Store explosion!

If you are an app developer with a hit app or game in the top 100 in the App store, we’d love to hear from you. Please drop us a line anytime. If you have a request for any particular developer you’d like to hear from, please join the discussion in the forum below!