DEV Community: Tim Ryan

Sunday Inspiration: Getting Excited AKA Inspo Hacks

Tim Ryan — Sun, 15 Mar 2020 14:04:32 +0000

This morning I thought I'd take a little moment to talk about inspiration.

When we talk about inspiration or feeling inspired, we often refer to it as something that happens to us. We're struck with inspiration. We don't do the striking.

This is completely untrue.

The most important skill I have developed in the last 8 months of being self-employed is realising that it's my job and my duty - to my business and clients - to get F**KING EXCITED about whatever it is I'm working on.

This is not always easy.

The gulf between thinking about a project and being actively working on is sometimes vast - and filled with uncertainty, even fear. If I'm still uninspired when I get to work (usually after putting things off as long as possible) the fear doesn't go away. It becomes discomfort. Sometimes full-blown anger. I find myself gritting my teeth and wearing those feelings as I work away, raging against my own bubbling dissatisfaction at every mouse click and keystroke. Not a great way to be, and a sure-fire way to associate a lot of negativity with particular projects, making them harder and harder to work on as time goes by.

There is another way.

In order to get excited about any of the projects we're working on - even the real clunkers - we can do three things:

Capture what we find inspirational.
Find angles in projects that trigger inspiration.
Apply our inspiration.

Inspo-Repos

If the goal is to recall that feeling of inspiration as quickly as possible and direct it into our current projects, it makes sense that we should capture and store the things we find inspiring when we find them.

I store bits of inspiration in two different places:

1. Pocket. This is my app/chrome extension of choice for bookmarking articles on techniques, trends, technologies, etc.

2. Google Keep. My "in the moment" brain dump. Ideas, photos, screenshots and links to cool stuff go in here.

Of course, there are gazillions of apps and services you could use. These just happen to be mine.

By regularly pushing content to these places, I create a growing gallery of the very best stuff the world has to offer. I can tag these into topics like #webdev or #design to narrow things down later, but half the fun is exploring the spaces as a whole and appreciating the wild variety of things I find truly exciting.

Some things I'm fascinated by and want to come back to:

1. Awesome branding designs.

Last year I was blown away by the branding of #hacktoberfest, an online, open-source collaboration event. The website was exciting, uncluttered and appealed to my love of vaporwave design. After asking around, the team at DigitalOcean claimed responsibility and pointed me at their other work on dribbble. Creating an illustration-led site with SVG animations is currently top of my priorities, and DO's gallery is full of amazing executions of web- and user-friendly creative design.

2. How-To Guides

As most of my websites are built on WordPress, my ears prick up when I hear about new features or technologies. I've heard WP transients mentioned a few times now, and yesterday stumbled across this article on CSS-Tricks that gives a pretty good overview. It's something that I definitely want to try out on a personal site or in a new build.

3. Über-cool Sh*t. (It's a big category)

Did you ever see the opening titles of American Gods, Halt and Catch Fire, or Westworld? Every mind-blowing main title sequence has been coming out of the elastic studio for years now. Taking a look through their website is an inspiration-overload all by itself.

These and a hundred other links are stored safely in the cloud to peruse through when I need a hit of inspiration.

Finding An Angle

When it's time to start working, we can do a couple of quick things so that we're approaching the task with true excitement, rather than vague foreboding.

Firstly, we can set aside a little time to revisit our inspo-repos and remind ourselves of what we love, what gets our blood pumping, or things we'd like to try.

The next is to simply start banging out ideas. For me, it's a process of getting a notepad and writing down ideas for the project. At least ten, but as many as possible. In web dev and design, it's all the things you might expect. Here's some examples I've jotted down:

Nav toggle animates from SVG text "MENU" to X close button on click
Older userbase - start with JAWS compatibility
Riff on government style headers for added authority
Mini-explosion on submit button
What if the whole site was a text adventure game?
Good excuse to test out Genesis Framework

The important thing to note is that it's as much about you, what you want to test, explore and implement (THIS) as it is the project's specific needs (THAT). THIS will be an awesome solution for THAT. Fulfilling the brief is a must, but why not do in a way that uses your best ideas and is genuinely enjoyable to you?

I like to think of this process as a pre-workout warm up. You can dive right in without it, but you're probably going to hurt yourself, and not achieve the results you want.

Inspiration As Motivation

I'll take a vulnerable moment to say, this feels awful - even dangerous - to admit.

I'm not motivated by money.

That's a BIG problem for someone running their own business.

I can be enticed, seduced and wooed with money, but when the rubber hits the road, an extra £10k on the table - on its own - wouldn't make me one iota more interested in a project.

I've had to wrestle with this for some time because, without motivation, productivity is impossible. The speed at which my projects get delivered is directly linked to my excitement and interest in the work itself.

That's not to say I won't take projects on that I don't like the look of, or charge more for them. It means that I simply have to bring self-awareness and understand:

What are the angles that will MAKE each project exciting to me?
Where can I find the inspiration for solving the interesting problems?
Is this an opportunity to try a new approach for the first time?

I mention this because you might be in the same boat. For too long I struggled to push things forward and wondered why I simply couldn't bring myself to care, even though it meant getting the project paid and off my desk. Finally, I started figuring out what steps I had to take to not just care, but be fully inspired by the opportunities and challenges the work offered. That's when motivation kicked in.

The Application of Inspiration

Inspiration is pointless if we don't use it. Choosing to set the time aside to get inspired before getting started takes discipline and habit. Habits work best with triggers.

Here's a trick, leave a sticky note in the centre of your monitor that says:

"Step One: Get Excited."

Don't turn the damn thing on until you've spent ten minutes wandering through your inspo-repos on a non-work device, and another ten banging out some ideas for the project you're about to work on.

You'll know when it's time to head to the computer because you'll have thought of something so interesting and exciting that you simply MUST get to work.

If you have similar routines, tools or tips for using inspiration, or simply want to share some of the stuff that's got you inspired, please drop a comment below.

Header Image Credit: Starz American Gods, elastic.

Share your LinkedIn handles below

Tim Ryan — Sun, 15 Mar 2020 08:05:58 +0000

Hey DEVvers,

I love the kind of thoughtful content that gets shared here. Nothing would make me happier than making my LinkedIn feed a bit more... well... DEVvy.

Drop me a connection request or share your handles below.

p.s. I'm not as active on Twitter, but feel like I should be. If you want to share your account handles below, I'll check them out too.

Coding In Quarantine

Tim Ryan — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 23:45:41 +0000

No, I don't have coronavirus. In fact I'm the safest possible place (for now).

About a year back, my wife and I registered our details for FluCamp. Just after Christmas they gave me a call and asked if I wanted to participate in a preventative drug trial for Respiratory syncytial virus.

"Yummy", I said.

Fast forward two months and now I'm currently quarantined in Whitechapel, London. I've been in this room for the last four days, with ten more to go.

Not something I'd admit to my LinkedIn network exactly, but y'all seem cool.

I haven't told any of my clients, and have spent each day answering emails, building websites and growing my knowledge of javascript through online courses.

It's a bit weird being locked in a box - when was the last time you spent two weeks in one room? But stranger still is how reasonably smoothly everything still runs when cut off from the outside world.

Even so, turning on the TV each morning and seeing the latest #coronavirus news is a little scary. It seems to be really doing a number on the UK and I'm of course worried about my friends and family.

Anyway, just wanted to share. If anyone has any questions, feel free.

Sources for business docs? - Policies, Proposals & SLAs

Tim Ryan — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 18:26:22 +0000

Q: For those running their own business, how did you source your first business docs?

Context:

So I'm about 6 months into freelancing/small business and still very much running everything on my own, without much prior business management experience.

I'm struggling to know how to put essential business documents together in a professional way for day-to-day use.

Up until now, I've been using random online templates or putting agreement details in emails. But now, a client who's considering using me for web hosting needs a Service Level Agreement around response times, uptimes, etc. and I want something a) robust and b) that I can reuse and update over time.

There's also the question of technology, and whether these things should be signed digitally, or whether a simple email confirmation will do.

If you have any stories around where your fist documentation came from and any lessons you've learned, I'd love to hear it. I'm thinking about:

Project Proposals
Service Level Agreements
Subcontractor Agreements
Non-Disclosures
etc.

I made a video

Tim Ryan — Mon, 24 Feb 2020 20:49:31 +0000

Hey everyone - not sure if this is right for Dev, but I've been wanting to create some super-simple video tips to help people who manage their own website to improve their online performance.

I bloody hate getting in front of the camera, but my wife (a LinkedIn superstar) convinced me it was important to raise my professional profile. I want to stop being seen as a freelancer and start looking a bit more professional. Apparently this is the way to do it.

Anyway, here it is.

I'd appreciate any constructive feedback you'd be happy to offer.

And I'd be curious to know if there's anything you guys are putting out that has helped you raise your professional profile. It's tough out there and I don't know about you, but believe you have any credibility to be telling others what to do is a big challenge - at least for me, who much prefers it here behind the keyboard.

The "Build me a website" scam

Tim Ryan — Thu, 02 Jan 2020 12:59:01 +0000

I'm skirting around a scam. I know it's a scam. But I'm not sure how.

The details:

I've had someone contact me from far outside of my usual area, asking me to build them a website.

She can't talk on the phone because she says she is hard of hearing.

She evades my questions that ask where she found me.

Her "business" is an online clothing brand, which has absolutely zero footprint online, not registered on companies house, no social media, etc.

She immediately accepted the rough estimate, which I costed WAY higher than I usually would (sketchiness tax).

She wants to pay by credit card asap.

I asked for an address and a business name for the invoice. What I got back was residential and very generic.

And in addition to the above, the language and grammar in the emails were slightly off in a few places.

"What is the name of the machine/merchant service you are going to use to charge my credit card for the upfront deposit and its percentage processing fee?"

I reached out to a chap who works in sales for a web agency and he's had something similar, but couldn't remember the specifics. He - like me - kept it at arm's length, and eventually decided against letting them make any kind of payment.

I'm not going to correspond any further. All the alarm bells have gone off in my head to know this is not worth looking into.

But I'm itching to know... how would this have worked?

Has anyone come across this kind of request before, and if so, what did you do?

Who did the Hacktoberfest brand design this year?

Tim Ryan — Fri, 08 Nov 2019 12:11:08 +0000

Does anyone know? It was effin lush. Can't find any attribution anywhere and I'd like to check out more of the studio's work for inspo.

What do you wish your clients understood better?

Tim Ryan — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 22:46:29 +0000

It's great to be hired as an expert, but sometimes it helps when clients have a vague concept of what the hell you're talking about.

For me, it's why they should look after their own domains, rather than letting their web companies handle it.

And maybe just a little bit about how SEO works.

What's yours?

Ten Things to Smash This Project

Tim Ryan — Tue, 05 Nov 2019 11:46:45 +0000

This has, by far, been my most productive few weeks since becoming self-employed back in July.

Three full design proposals out the door to interested or engaged clients. A new article on my fledgeling blog site written and shared. And over 20 hours spent planning, recruiting and designing for an upcoming tech event I'm working on for 1 year from now. And that was just the last 7 days.

This isn't a ton of work - I get that. This is perhaps an ordinary week for most people. But for me, a serial procrastinator and addict to environment vices, this marks a huge win.

To celebrate I thought I'd finally write my first DEV post, and share the Ten Things I've done to turn it all around. Spoiler: it's not really ten things. It's just one.

The List of Ten.

I came across this idea in the book Tools of Titans some time ago, shared by James Altucher. It's a pretty simple technique - you come up with a list of ten ideas about anything you like. They can be sensible, dumb, easy or impossible. What matters is that you get to ten. And although many of them are bound to be terrible, one or two will be decent, and those decent ones will plant the seeds of a great idea.

For a while, I was doing this every morning, with any kind of subject I could think of: Ten apps I'd find useful, Ten alternatives to a business card, Ten places to work from, etc.

This got me generating a whole bunch of great ideas, but it was also counter-productive. Some of the ideas were too interesting to me, and I'd find whole days sunk into rabbit holes for stuff that wasn't going to pay the bills. Nothing separates me from my work than unadulterated curiosity in a shiny new idea.

What changed a few weeks back is simple and obvious. I started aiming my Ten Ideas at the projects that I feared the most. The website builds that I simply couldn't continue with. The pit-of-the-stomach projects. I forced myself to sit there in bed each morning, notes app open, and write out Ten Things that I could do, design or build-wise. They didn't have to be good:

Landing page of client's face with flashing epilepsy eyes (gif?)
Accordion opens with circular saw cutting through page
Replace all pictures with hand-drawn doodles of the pictures

But amongst the bad ideas were a few good, practical ones. And here's the secret - you only need one good idea. I knew they were good ideas because it was real in my head, and suddenly I had the next good idea. The right neurons finally started firing and twenty minutes later, I had solutions to obstacles that had stumped me for weeks.

And once the idea is there, nothing is keeping me from my computer. Not breakfast. Not even a shower. I throw on some sweats, fire up my mac and plug away until I know the end is in sight.

So this is it, my new routine. Wake up, write a list and go.

In the past four months of being self-employed, I've tried meditation, mindfulness, running and yoga to get me "in the zone" each morning but nothing has succeeded. Every day was a slog. Now, for the first time, I feel like productivity is the norm.

I guess it's simple. My Lists of Ten are a way to replace dread with excitement. They're a way to get the creative, ideas-driven part of my brain fired up first thing in the morning, focused on something that matters. And when the juice runs out, the client has been emailed or the DNS switched, I can get on with the admin and curiosity projects that used to take up my whole day, without feeling an ounce of guilt or worry that I should be working on something more important.

I know this isn't particularly technical, but I wanted to share how I'm finally overcoming my own procrastination. If you're struggling to get a certain project off the ground, try this first thing in the morning and let me know how it goes.