Months of Adjusting

Hello, how were your last couple of months?

Mine went battling myself for the “right” decision on the StaticPage pivot or not question. Which to be honest still hunts me but I have decided to move forward with it and make StaticPage a real page builder for various theme supporting platforms.

Time to Make Money

While being paralyzed from the above paragraph and various opinions about what should I do with the damn thing which isn’t less paralyzing. Shifting context to something else hopefully would help me come back to StaticPage with a refresh look and energy.

This brought me to apply for “Osek Murshe” (Authorized Dealer) Israeli term for Small Business License for small businesses with yearly revenue above ₪100k. “Why?”, you might ask. Well, it was time for me to get off my ass and start making money! They aren’t growing on trees you know?! I wish they were… Anyhow, the best way I know how to make money besides working a full-time job is freelancing, and to make everything legal I had to get a small business license of some sort.

The Website

Getting “Osek Murshe” was the easier part, getting clients would be the harder part as always is. Clients want to see a portfolio if you are a creative professional. Great, this means I can build myself a website, but first I would sketch it out, to the Sketchmobile! Here is a website sketch that wasn’t picked:

Website Sketch Website sketch that could go pro but never did.

The design you are reading off right now was the lucky one. If you are reading these lines off an email (I have sent you with a fashioned delay) you are more than welcome to visit the website at idan.goldman.work. Let me know what do you think about the long resume page. ;)

I won’t bore you with all the details of what and how the website was built but rather give you a fast bulletin summary:

  • My goal was to build a “read-only” resume page without visual distractions in an article format and not in the traditional resume template format.
  • Beside the Resume page there are 2 other pages on the website Notebook page for my blobs and Say Hello for anyone that want to contact me over email or just feel like staying anonymous.
  • The website was built upon Jekyll static site generator, this tech gave it a good loading speed and Markdown support for easy content writing.
  • The build created 2 new open source projects: Kit and Rebo. You can read all about them at their GitHub pages or in the Products and Open Source section of the resume page.
  • You can view the source code of idan.goldman.work on GitHub.

There is still work to be done on the website. For example splitting the Resume page into About, Services, and Projects pages. Because it’s really too long of a page to have people read in one sitting while searching for a freelancer or a consultant. And this work will be done in the next iterations of work on the website.

Workflow Adjustment

At the beginning of the road if you remember I was writing about blocking websites, tracking time, writing to-dos, setting goals, and of course my beautiful soul wanted to do meditation. Well, this went to shit over time…

So, these days I’m trying to readjust but first here are the stuff that did work:

  • Blocking websites doesn’t work for me, need to find another way to avoid browsing distractions. I’m open to suggestions!
  • Tracking time was the most valuable tool to keep me in the zone of productivity and sadly was the first one I have unlearned.
  • Setting goals felt great but I forgot to check them on a weekly basis and see if I’m in line with them.
  • Writing and checking out to-dos might be the only thing that kept me going and I have actively tried to perfect it.

Here are the adjustments I’m trying to apply:

  • Going back on track with time tracking half-hour working cycles aren’t enough, I want to increase them to an hour and see if this helps me dive into “the zone” focus mindset.
  • Month by month goals for the next half-year changed into one list of goals. Every last Thursday of the month I’m taking a look at the list and decide the next month’s goals.
  • Every last Thursday of a week (or any other day at the weekend) I’m going over the to-dos and the monthly goals to plan out the week.
  • At the end of each day I’m going through the to-dos I have done that day and plan out for next day’s to-dos.

Meditation and sport aren’t in my routine yet but they must be in the future for now I’m trying to remind myself to stay present in the moment and have a healthy food diet.

That is it for this update folks. Write you next time! :)

Thank you for reading.