The Monthly Log #1: Create > Consume
Hey, I’m Julien. I’m a self-taught web developer and designer who switched careers from digital marketing to web dev last year.
I wanted to start this monthly log to document my journey building my projects but also to get into a habit of writing and keep myself accountable.
The plan is to publish a “Log” on the last day of each month where I share some of my thoughts and go through what I’ve done during the month and what I’m planning for the coming month. I’ll also share some cool stuff I’ve done or came across at the end of each post.
Anyway, now that the introduction is done let’s dive in!
CREATE > CONSUME
After years of spending too much time watching YouTube videos and scrolling through Twitter and Instagram mindlessly for hours looking at what others were doing, I’ve decided that 2023 would be the year where I’d create more than I consume. And this Monthly Log is one of many actions I’ve taken so far to achieve this goal.
At the beginning of January, I also sat down and listed 3 ways to achieve this goal and I’m pretty chuffed to report it has actually worked (!).
Change my approach to consuming content by telling myself that I need to create content from what I consume. For example, I’d need to turn a quote from a YT video into a tweet or turn a tweet bookmarked into a new design idea.
Actively reduce the amount of YouTube videos I watch and make the time I spend on Twitter more efficient (engage with tweets and post content I’ve created)
Schedule an hour every day to be creative (during the work week) - to create content or come up with ideas.
I’ve got quite a lot of projects in mind for this year: a website template business, a job board newsletter I want to monetise (if the coming recession doesn’t decide otherwise 🤞) and a couple of web apps I’m really excited to build.
So as long as I can limit the amount of content I consume I should be able to stand here at the end of the year and tick all these projects as done - wish me luck!
THIS MONTH I CREATED..
Cardile website template
I built this minimal profile card template with a black and white look, which also has a dark and light theme to suit any black & white photos.
It’s available to build with HTML/CSS, Notion (using Potion), Carrd and Framer.
Framer button components
Gumroad is getting a lot of hate right now but you’ve got to praise them for the bold decisions they made when redesigning their website. I started learning Framer so I experimented to see if I could replicate their buttons, just for fun.
NEXT MONTH, I WILL..
As most developers, I totally underestimated the amount of work it takes to release a website template across 5 different platforms so the plan for this month is to release one template only available on Framer.
I’ve also been watching and reading a lot about Print-On-Demand as an additional source of income so I’ve planned to run a little experiment to see how far I can take this. I’ll report back in next month’s Log.
And finally, I spent most of this month working on no-code platforms so I really want to get back into coding - I’ve got a little game project in mind that I’m excited to start building.
CURRENTLY, I’M…
📘 Reading:
Just started reading Bret Easton Ellis’ first book in 13 years and realised how much I had missed his writing! It’s called The Shards.
📺 Watching:
Earlier this month I finished watching The White Lotus. This is a MUST-watch series - check out the trailer here.
📖 Learning:
I did this really good free crash course on YouTube at the beginning of the month to learn how to build websites on Framer - one of the best no-code tools out there right now.
COOL SH*T
Spend Elon Musk’s Fortune - I still can’t work out if this is funny or depressing so I’ll let you make up your mind.
Meta Tags - a tool to generate meta tag code for your website and preview how your web page will look when shared online. Super useful!
Insanely Useful Website - the only newsletter I open every single time. It does what it says on the tin!
Congrats, you’ve made it to the end of my very first post - hope you enjoyed that! I’m still very much experimenting with the format and content so I’d love to hear your thoughts.
You can also follow my journey on Twitter where I share updates regularly and sign up for my newsletter to get the next Monthly Log in your inbox next month.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the next one 🫡