

Single founder work flow/organization? - Mz

Super dumb question of the day, but I am looking for anecdotes about how people organized their work to launch independently. Yes, I have done a search of HN (and found a discussion of Trello, which might help me) but I am really not finding what I need.<p>I was a good student in my youth and I was a homemaker and homeschooling mom for a long time. Then I had an entry level job at a Fortune 500 company for five years. None of that really gives me a workflow model for developing my websites. I have several websites I want to develop. I have recently gotten some feedback and other support and implemented some of the suggestions, but I am currently waiting on other people for some things (not a criticism of them) and feeling directionless. Surely there are things I can be working on productively until they get back to me.<p>My sites grew out of audience interest. Initially they began as emails on a parenting list. After repeating myself two dozen times, I would take one of the better emails and edit it for publication to my website, or sometimes if something got a really big reaction out of people I would edit it and post it. But that wasn't a business model. It wasn't even intended to be. I have to find a means to organize my thoughts, develop my sites, work on not just posting but also promoting and monetizing my work. And I am at a loss as to how to work all that out.<p>Thanks
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bkyan
If you're a visual person, you could look into something like corkboard.me (an
online board for your post-it notes) or one of the many kanban board offerings
-- just google kanban, and a bunch of services should pop up. My own webapp,
<http://mindcast.com> could probably be used, as well, although it's more
oriented towards visually mapping bookmarks.

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Mz
Thanks.

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kfullert
I'm in a kind of similar position - sole founder, lots of ideas and not a good
enough way (at the moment) of keeping track of them.

From looking around, OmniFocus and Basecamp (but Basecamp Light if it existed)
would do the job, though bootstrapping I can justify the money for what may or
may not work for me.

Interested to see what others recommend, if there's anything else to look at,
or do I just write a lean requirements/project management app (which I could
eat dog-food with and track the app I'm building in the app I'm building :-)

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zbuc
Don't write your own project management app unless that's what your idea is.
IMO.

I really like OmniFocus but it's pretty expensive, and you have to purchase
separate licenses for the iPhone, iPad, and OS X versions.

TaskPaper is popular. I tried it and found it too limiting after getting used
to OmniFocus.

I really like OmniFocus actually. That's my recommendation for task management
software. It's very fast to CTRL+ALT+Space and enter new tasks(whenever you
have an idea come to you, just enter it and it will go in your inbox and you
can organize it later) and it's easy to keep everything organized. I put
almost everything I do in there -- I even have a weekly recurring project to
clean my apartment up.

Now, OmniFocus has a breaking point -- it's really for personal productivity,
it's not a bug tracker, and it's not for collaboration. If you start growing
your business and have other people working with you, you'll need something
else... but for solo projects and keeping your personal life organized I
really like OmniFocus.

Edit: oh, yes, for teams <http://asana.com/> is good. I tried TaskPaper and
keeping the document in a Dropbox share -- didn't work too well. The first
time we heard "where the hell did my changes go?!" it was time to drop it.

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kfullert
OK, Asana looks pretty much what I was looking for (about the only thing I'd
"like" though probably not need is the ability to link tasks (ie Task x is
blocked until Task y is complete)

Thanks for the tip, I can see this being the answer (for me at least)

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briholt
Couple of suggestions:

1\. You mention "sites" plural. You may want to focus on just ONE site and
pour your energy into that.

2\. Start self-project management small and simple, stick to it, then get more
complicated as you need it. I like to start with just a Google Doc/Excel
spread sheet. After doing that well for a few months, try something more
sophisticated. The worst thing to do is get too deep into project _management_
and not your project.

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Mz
Thank you.

At the moment, I am trying to primarily focus on my health site for
development: <http://www.healthgazelle.com/> But I also have a blog which is
mostly intended as a personal outlet. I don't feel my health site really has
an audience. It is far easier to write for the blog. Any suggestions on how to
do audience development or otherwise get more focused on what to do for the
health site?

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briholt
Focusing on the blog is a good idea. In my limited blog experience, I've only
seen one real approach: write like Hell, tell everyone you can about it,
swallow sadness for the first year while no one reads it, then randomly after
a year of hard work it'll start getting a bunch of traffic and take off.

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Mz
Trying to wrap my brain around this feedback. Here are some additional
details: The blog isn't intended to be commercial. It is intended to be a
personal outlet to help keep my big fat mouth from keeping me mired in
controversy and drowning in hot water in online forums. I have debated taking
it down, in part because some of it is extremely personal. But I get a great
deal out of doing the writing and I think some posts are really good, so I
have left it up for now.

Long term, I still hope to do a comic. Short term, I am trying to get more
traffic and monetize my health site, which is the site people keep expressing
interest in and willingness to support. I am homeless at the moment. I have
time to write but no money. I need an income stream and the health site
_seems_ like the best place to start.

Thoughts? I keep wrestling with these questions and don't have good answers.

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Mz
I also posted this question elsewhere and have been directed to A List Apart,
which I already knew about but hadn't thought of. I was specifically directed
here:
[http://m.alistapart.com/topics/process/projectmanagementwork...](http://m.alistapart.com/topics/process/projectmanagementworkflow/)

And I am happy to report that I have already found an article of interest. But
I am still interested in hearing personal anecdotes and/or getting links to
similar.

Thanks.

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moubarak
use evernote

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Mz
I am on a tablet. Is that compatible with a tablet?

Thanks.

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moubarak
Yes it is. check it out <http://evernote.com/>

