Rudrank's Dispatch: Revisiting Goals.

I started the year by creating anti-goals, and I recently revisited them to ensure they still align with my current self and future vision.

One of the anti-goals I set on the 1st of January was:

I do not want to feel like I have to work all day.

While I still do not want to work all day, I realised I was complacent last year and want to work hard this year. I want to prioritise my health while writing and building a lot. Make the most of my prime years.

I had a great time travelling last year and want to continue this year, too. On the side, I want to invest heavily in writing and building a career out of it. Striking a balance between exploring and building something meaningful.

Interestingly, my definition of hustle also changed. I no longer want to feel proud of working 12-15 hours and label it a grind. Grinding is now 2-3 hours of deep work, and I am more than happy to call it a good day!

Articles

The whole week was invested in shipping my first visionOS app on the App Store. There was continuous back and forth with the App Store review team as they rejected my first visionOS thrice, sigh. I just uploaded a new build, and I hope it is approved this time.

In the process, I realised that creating screenshots for App Store is a pain for visionOS development. So, I ended up documenting my process and solution:

Exploring visionOS: Creating Screenshots for App Store Using Simulator

Learn how to overcome resolution challenges when creating screenshots for visionOS apps using Simulator. Upscale and crop images efficiently for App Store Connect with these tips.

RudrankRudrank Riyam

It is still a pain, and I am working on a handy macOS app to solve this problem!

There are a few articles I found interesting while at work. I love posts where the author takes the reader on a journey of exploration from the beginning naive solution to the optimal one, and the mistakes they made along the way.

Unit Test the Observation Framework

Make your iOS 17 view models rock-solid

Jacob’s Tech TavernJacob Bartlett

Image aspectRatio without frames | Alexito’s World

Today I spent a couple of hours understanding how SwiftUI aspectRatio modifiers works and how it interacts with Image. It’s a surprisingly simple system, but also one that made me…

Alexito's World

Conferences

It has been an incredible journey in the past year. I presented at various conferences around the globe, including Chicago, Warsaw, Amsterdam, and Singapore. I covered a range of spectrums, from sponsored to full-length, opening, and lightning talks!

I am so excited to present at iOSKonf, Macedonia in May this year! 🥳 This will be my first non-technical talk, focusing on building a personal brand beyond coding.

Over the years, I have dedicated myself to honing my coding, writing, and sharing skills. I am fortunate to receive multiple opportunities directly from Twitter and LinkedIn. his talk will cover my journey and how you can leverage the power of socials to elevate your development career!

Stay tuned for more details about why this conference is so special to me when the agenda is released!

ioSKonf 24 | conference

iOSKonf 2024 is scheduled to take place on the 14th and 15th of May 2024, at the luxurious Hotel Limak in Skopje, with a capacity to accommodate 300 participants. Over the course of two days, we will gather iOS enthusiasts from around the world to explore the latest trends, share insights, and foster connections within the vibrant iOS ecosystem.

ioSKonf

Sponsor

A shoutout to RevenueCat for sponsoring the website and this newsletter! I have been an unofficial advocate since 2020, using it for personal and client apps. 

Their latest feature, Paywalls, helps you add paywalls in one line of code. I already used it at work, making it much quicker to iterate, edit, remotely configure and test your app's paywalls!

Quote of the Week

This week's quote is something I read on X (formerly Twitter) and it is along the lines:

It's not about whether I achieve the goal or not, but who I become. Achieving the goal is irrelevant.

This quote seems counterintuitive. We set goals to achieve them, right? But, reflecting on my personal experiences, the journey towards achieving a goal is just as important, if not more so, than the actual achievement.

I tend to focus so much on the outcome – did I hit the number in my bank account? Did I lose the weight? Did I get the views? So easy to forget the journey along the way.

Take my massive money goals from last to last year. I did not reach the specific dollar amount I had set for myself, but I transformed my whole relationship with money. I learned to manage my finances more effectively, and I discovered that I could earn beyond what I had previously thought possible.

What do you think? Do you agree that the journey towards achieving our goals is more important than the destination?

Conclusion

After this conference talk added to my never-ending to-do list, I know the next two months are going to be hectic. I am slowly carving out my writing career while maintaining my current freelance development gigs. Exploring visionOS is still fun, and juggling priorities is a game I am not so used to playing, haha.

Wishing for a productive week ahead!