Building my personal site — project 2, week 1 | 12 projects in 12 months
Hello all! I'm currently on a journey to complete 12 projects in 12 months after coming to terms with not being able to finish my projects.
See my progress in real-time
All of my strategy, design work and project management is publically available here
Week 1
This week has felt a little bittersweet if I'm honest. Sometimes when you're working on a project, the creativity just seems to pour out of you. All the blocks seem to fall into place and the whole thing comes together with very little friction.
Well... that's exactly what happened this week. The mission was clear — create a personal site for showing and writing about building in public. The user flows and site architecture simply slotted into place like one of those satisfying gifs you see on Instagram.
The wireframes and designs followed suit pretty nicely too. I'd got 90% of the strategy and UI designed in 48 hours. I was off to a great start. I say back with a smug smirk on my face thinking "I'm going to get so far ahead of schedule here, this will be easy". But then, if something seems too good to be true — as they say; it probably is.
I'm building this up like there's some grand obstacle that stopped me in my tracks but honestly the truth is far less interesting. Real-life got in the way. Working the day job, exercising, walking the dog as well as a broken boiler and a radiator that decided to fall off the wall (for no reason at all apparently).
I share this with you not to send you to sleep but to demonstrate that sometimes the biggest things that stop us from progressing are the most mundane. The obligations of the everyday, the "business as usual". The small tasks like house chores and such eat away will eat into your day if you let them.
The takeaway — and something I'm trying this coming week — is to block out allotted time to work on this project and not let anything (emergencies aside) from stopping the progress! Now time-blocking is nothing new. But it's good to remind ourselves of the tried and tested strategies that can help keep us moving forward.
What I did this week
- The UX of the website, mission, site architecture and navigational flows.
- High fidelity designs of all pages
What I plan to do this week
- Build out all of the atomic components needed for the website
- Get static versions of the home page and project page built.
Thanks for reading, keep moving forward.
Cool to see the progress you already made, keep it up. I like the fact that you've made the notion site available for everyone, cool to see some insights on how others approach a certain project.
I know the feeling of distractions that are out of your control. I think it is indeed a good idea to block time slots, but you never know what will happen. My approach would also be to spend any time that you are doing "nothing". Watching TV, scrolling through social media even going to the toilet would be moments that you can "work" on your projects. Even if it's for 5 minutes. Fill in the gaps in your day and I believe you will start noticing more progress. That will be my approach when I start my 12 projects in 12 months challenge (starting January), some it might help you as well.
Looking forward to the first version of your website.
Just clicked through your notion. Awesome that you make this publicly available. I love seeing other people's work this way.
I went through the process of rebuilding my personal site (https://www.jansroka.com/) 2 months ago, and my process was, well, very agile and messy :)
Yours looks very nicely done and sophisticated. Great work!
I love the "building in public since 2022" on your mockups :)
Thanks for the comment @jansroka, I enjoy seeing how people work, with everything included, the good and the bad. We need more of that, I think :)
I checked out your website, I like the minimal feel but your product, Daito is hard to find within the text on your home page. Maybe stick it in its own section or card so people can't miss it? Just throwing my 2 cents in of course.