Pushing Limits and Learning from Setbacks
A Monthly Recap of Progress and Lessons Learned
Hey everyone! It’s Hasan here 👋
Ever felt like you’re at your limit, only to discover you can push even further? It happens to me at the gym when someone adds more weight to my set. With a spotter, I push myself and often lift more than I thought possible. Turns out, my limit wasn’t really my limit, and the only way to find out was by pushing harder!
And this principle applies to all areas of life. Not pushing limits on things I care about feels wasteful to me. It means not reaching my full potential.
So, I’ve been testing some boundaries with my work—not by overworking or sacrificing balance with other aspects of life, but by actively working towards multiple goals I really desire to achieve.
Instead of focusing on one goal at a time, I’ve been trying to create a system where I can make progress toward many goals simultaneously. I understand this means taking more time to reach these goals, but I stay flexible. Some days or weeks, I focus more on one thing than the others, giving it more time and attention. Prioritization and flexibility are key, especially when I feel like working on something, but the priority lies elsewhere.
Having many projects on hand took most of my time and energy, leaving little for creating content, including this newsletter.
When I first started this newsletter, I sent it weekly, sharing my journey, experiences, learnings, and tips. Sometimes, I struggled to find time during the week to write. Other times, I struggled to find ideas when not much happened.
So, going forward, I’ll be sending it on a monthly basis. This gives me more time to focus on actual work and also more valuable things to share.
Now, let’s recap what happened…
Mockup Featured in US and India
We’ve achieved a significant milestone—Mockup was featured on the App Store in both the US and India!
Here’s how it went down: we received an email from the App Store Team informing us that Mockup may be considered for a feature spot. They requested promotional artwork, so I promptly scheduled a meeting with my designer to discuss and create the necessary materials.
Once the artwork was ready, we submitted it for review. It’s important to note that being featured on the App Store isn’t guaranteed, and Apple doesn’t notify developers directly when their app is featured.
However, I have AppFollow set up to automatically send app feature notifications to our Discord server. That’s how we found out about Mockup being featured first in the US, followed by India.
While the feature didn’t result in a significant influx of new users, the recognition from the App Store Team is incredibly exciting for us.
Outsourcing Challenges
Apart from Mockup, I’m also building a new app, and the experience has been a rollercoaster.
I initially started coding the app with SwiftUI but kept hitting limitations, forcing me to start from scratch with UIKit. This setback led me to try outsourcing parts of the project to freelancers on Upwork to speed up development, but that only wasted more time.
My first hire promised to complete the project in 2 days, which seemed unrealistic, but she claimed to have done something similar before. She failed to deliver on time but kept sending progress videos. A month later, she had completed about 80%, and I was optimistic, but she went off-grid and stopped responding! I had to close the contract and request a refund. Surprisingly, she disputed it, but I eventually won.
I then hired someone else. After a meeting, I realized he was avoiding the important and complicated parts. We had another meeting, and I found out he lacked the necessary skills. I ended the contract again.
These experiences wasted not only time but also a lot of energy. I’ll be very hesitant to hire from Upwork again due to the skills mismatch of the freelancers and the misleading claims about their English proficiency.
Now, I’ve decided to handle the implementation myself, and despite progressing slowly, I’ve achieved more than both hires combined.
What’s Next for Mockup
In recent weeks, Mockup has been my top priority. I’ve been working on an update for the past 3 months and decided it was time to wrap it up.
So, I finalized the new features, conducted more tests and bug fixes, and documented everything so my team could work on the App Store listing and marketing materials.
Why now? Because I’m already diving into the next exciting update—adding support for Apple Pencil Pro!
I’m currently experimenting with the Apple Pencil squeeze gesture and testing a few ideas. I’ll continue experimenting until we formulate a clear concept.
That’s It!
That’s it for now. Thank you for being part of this journey. Until next month!
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