Week 1 - How it began

The what. The why. The how.

I’ve loved building and creating for as long as I can remember. What started with LEGO evolved as I discovered the magic of the internet and the ability to create out of nothing but lines of text organized in the right way.

Last year, after seeing other creators list their projects, I decided to put together a list of my own:

It’s been helpful to see how I’ve been spending my time, but beyond this spreadsheet, I’ve been struggling to keep track of the various projects and ideas and stay organized. I’d find myself jotting random notes in Apple Notes or Notion. Things get lost and forgotten. As a result, I started thinking about how I might be able to do a better job of managing my focus and prioritizing the next most important thing that needed my attention. As I had new thoughts, how could I easily collect and document in a dedicated place, allowing me to move my attention back to that most important thing?

The result of that ruminating started to organize itself as ProjectGarden.co. And it’s already beginning to evolve into something I wish I had years ago. Not only a tool that helps organize all my projects and ideas but a way to help nourish them and grow.

I’m excited to continue sharing the progress and where I’m hoping to take this. My hope is that this becomes a place for makers to take their projects from idea to launch and give them the tools along the way.

That all said… I started actually coding the project on Tuesday of last week. Things were feeling too overwhelming, causing me to procrastinate, so I decided to just start and go as simple and bare-bones as possible to start. Instead of a full Ruby on Rails app, I started with Sinatra. This allowed me to focus on the pieces that I needed and nothing more. If you missed any of the updates on Twitter, here’s a day-by-day breakdown:

Day 1:

Zack Gilbert @zackgilbert

Started a new project yesterday. Trying out organizing my PRs by day with individual tasks as todos, summary of useful resources, and an approximation of how long it took. Going to commit to working on it every day and get something out by end of the week.

Day 2:

Zack Gilbert @zackgilbert

Day 2 was mostly full of meetings but was able to eek out a little bit during the evening and after the family was in bed. Got things "working" but definitely looks like trash. Today, I'm hoping to get it up on a server and start dogfooding.

Day 3:

Zack Gilbert @zackgilbert

Day 3 of the new project was a tough day due to my wife and son being sick. But was able to carve out time during his nap and after everyone was in bed to get the site working on @hatchboxio (took like 10 minutes) and start building a CSV/spreadsheet importer.

Day 4:

Zack Gilbert @zackgilbert

Day 4 of @prjgdn. Added @honeybadgerapp support, then fixed a couple issues and got the splash page ready for "launch", which really just meant something I could share and collect interest from others.

Day 5:

Zack Gilbert @zackgilbert

Day 5 of @prjgdn. Slowly tackling a bunch of the low hanging fruit. My biggest goal is to continue to dogfood it and gradually make improvements based on things that annoy me and prevent me from integrating it into my way of working.

Day 6:

Zack Gilbert @zackgilbert

Day 6 of @projectgardenco (handle change!) - largely a family day, but did a couple small things while the baby napped and after bedtime. Sending out the first weekly recap to website signups.

All in all, I’m really proud of myself for what I’ve been able to “throw” together while also being the primary caretaker to my son and sick wife. Who knows what will happen once I’m able to dedicate more time in the coming weeks. The biggest pieces I’m hoping to tackle in week 2 revolve around improving the marketing page and fleshing out the public profiles. I’m hoping to fully abandon my projects spreadsheet in favor of my ProjectGarden profile and start showcasing to people why the project might be something that they should care about.

If you’d like to get the latest and greatest updates as they happen, be sure to follow along on Twitter: @zackgilbert and @projectgardenco. And I’d really love to hear your thoughts on all this, so please don’t hesitate to send over high fives, recommendations, or any and all feedback.

Until next week, keep growing!