the reason why im asking this, feel free to skip if ya want ^^
hello! ive been hanging around the independent web for a while now, but i havent gotten as much work on my own site as id like to… (my last update in my changelog was in december of last year! yikes!)
the main issue im running into is setting aside the time to work on it and having way too many ideas that i end up overwhelming myself and not doing anything :(
so i wanted to ask…
how do you prefer to plan out whatever new project youre working on for your site? and if you have a lot of things youd like to work on, how do you decide which one you prioritize?
and a little side question- how do you go about making the time to work on your site? do you sit down for a long while to bang out as much as possible, or do you break it up into small chunks?
I try to work on projects for the amount of energy I have at the time. So one day that may be a few hours, others it may be only 30 minutes for a day. I think it is okay to take things in steps, but I also thing it is fine to share a project or put it on the web before it has reached what you feel is finished. I think our websites or projects can be living things that can keep growing or changing as we change or learn new things. So I think sometimes it can be a helpful motivator to get to a point where you are content sharing with others and then improving in the background. I love seeing how sites change and grow and I love knowing that others are learning new things to make that happen!
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how do you prefer to plan out whatever new project youre working on for your site?[/quote]
I keep a running list of things I want to add/change/remove from my website on paper lists, and transfer across to the reminders app on my phone/laptop. I have reminders setup as a basic kanban board.
I will take a look at what I’ve got on my list and will tackle anything that feels inspiring at the time. Say I’ve been surfing the web and come across something related, or a new technique to solve a problem? I’ll sit down and knock that one out.
Being a parent I need to find time between taking care of the kids which is the biggest challenge to me. I like to have at least an hour to sit down and concentrate. It takes me around 5-15 minutes to get myself into a flow state to work on things, especially difficult problems.
I’ll break things down into related chunks, e.g. not start too many different things at once.
Great question!! I honestly don’t do much planning myself. The most I have is a to do list for future pages, but I mostly work on inspiration, riding the motivation from a newly hatched idea. Afterall this is a hobby and I can work on it whenever.
Now I have had things stuck on my to do list for literal years. I think it took me two years to get the inspiration for my Original Characters page.
Right now I haven’t worked on it much due to less access to wifi (I have limited phone data) and being busy with traveling for work. But I also haven’t been itching with as many ideas. It comes in waves for me.
For you situation where you have so many ideas you don’t know where to start, I would go with one of the smaller simpler ideas first! Something quick and easy to get done and feel good about.
As for how long I work on my site at a time? I usually go for a long time, I like getting in the zone. But it’s not that I’m trying to get as much as done possible, I’m just excited about my idea and I want to flesh it out as it comes to mind. I typically work by project not by time span. (Which is probably why I balk so hard at the idea of chunking my hobbies into a set time of day/week etc)
historical document! first page design documents for the ELPiS.ws website
I always write things like this, if you write it down, you’ll remember it.
the second reason I write it all down is that while writing, I immediately calculate how difficult and long it will be for me to do it, I filter out what’s necessary, and the work goes much faster.
if you do everything “on the fly” when thoughts are in your head, you’ll forget most of it and won’t implement the main things.
I don’t know why, but seeing messy pages like this just gives me warm fuzzy feelings inside. I used to do my planning on paper, but I’m not always in a place where I can write now, so it’s shifted mostly to digital.
I have an app called Markor on my phone (FOSS markdown app), which I use for all sorts of notes because they can all be exported as text files (hightly recommend this app–I’ve lost too many notes that were in proprietary apps because they were stuck in some company’s vault), and I have one just for “web site ideas.” I jot them down when I’m out and about and review them later.
I also have a personal wiki that I use for more elaborate/multimedia stuff, and I have an ongoing “site ideas” page there. Most of my write-ups for blog posts and pages start there and get fleshed out until I ready to move them.
