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In this episode, I discuss my struggles with site life balance and how it has affected my progress on various side projects. I've been feeling overwhelmed with multiple projects and responsibilities, including my podcast, SaaS initiatives, and family commitments. As a result, I haven't been able to make significant strides, particularly with my content creation efforts. To address this, I plan to focus on decompressing with activities like playing Zelda and walking each morning, while also developing a clearer content strategy for my podcasts and social media. I recognize the importance of these side projects as enjoyable pursuits rather than sources of stress, and I'm hopeful that by finding a better balance, I'll regain my enthusiasm and productivity.
In this week's episode of Debugging Dan, I discuss my newly coined term, site life balance in self-work life balance. I've been not doing that great in my site life balance and my site projects are suffering. I'm not progressing. And in this week's episode, I discuss why, how that makes me feel and what I'm going to do to change that. Let's go.
Welcome to Debugging Dan, where I share weekly my journey, balancing life, a full-time job and site project. I'm Dan, your host. Let's dive in.
Well, let's start with the bad news. There is no get it done update this week. The schedule is one week of get it done, then another week with a different topic and then the update for the get it done and then a new get it done episode. So last week we ran along with Aaron Francis's article on Finish Your Projects. So this week we should have an update to get it done for, but there isn't. And I'm taking this episode to explain why. And with that, I'm coining a new term, site life balance, which is a pun on work life balance.
And for me, my site life balance is wacky for the last week at least. So I've made little to no progress. I did some social networks, investigations, but that was only a few queries to JetGBT creating a table. And I started on my robots.txt crawler project. I set up Next.js and some progress was made there, but at some point I struggled for an entire evening to create a bottom drawer component. So something that would sit at the bottom of your screen, show some information. If you clicked on it, the bottom is supposed to pop up and then show more. And I spent almost an entire evening on it and it still didn't work.
So that was a big indicator for me that something wasn't really right. It's not flowing at the moment for me right now. And the feeling that I have now is different than what I highlight in episode five of the podcast. I linked that in the show notes where I was really stuck and there I was more overwhelmed. And the tips that I have there amongst other things is creating a very detailed to-do list and just checking off one item at a time. I have a detailed to-do list and I'm not able to check off the items. So I spent some time thinking, why is my site life balance not in sync?
And I think it's because my intention is spread too much. So I have several side projects going on. I'm doing the podcast. I'm trying to grow that. I'm trying to do SaaS. So I have three SaaS projects currently going on, Observerlize, Datastore and Teletron, which are getting little to no visitors at all. And I've started working on an SEO project to get more acquainted with SEO. And what I'm feeling is that that's too much. And besides that, I have a family, which is very important to me. I have work, which is also important. So I need to make choices.
And I've thought about it. And I think that one of the reasons that I'm feeling out of balance is that I haven't really developed my content creation skills. So I started doing this podcast in May and I just figured I'd win it. And it works. I just started doing it and it's been slowly been improving. I've slowly been upgrading it and that's good. But now getting to the point that I'm not really improving anymore. I do want to do a lot more stuff like clipping parts of the podcast and creating new parts of content of that during the week that I can share and have other people engage with it and hopefully inspire people.
But I'm not getting that off the ground because I have too little time, but also because it's a new world for me. I'm not familiar with it. So I'm not sure how to approach it. And that's something that isn't working because I'm not able to progress. I think that's one of the things that's blocking me. And what I need to remind myself of is that these are side projects. These are things that I have fun doing. There is some ulterior goal in getting like multiple revenue streams, less income dependencies on one source. That's the same thing, but also having fun meeting people, socializing, getting in contact with like-minded people. Those are the goals.
But short term, there are no real deadlines. It's just about having fun. And for the past week or past two weeks, that was less fun. And I'm going to change that. And by doing two things, I'm going to continue playing Zelda, the new Zelda on the Switch. So Echoes of Wisdom, which I've been playing for the past week because I really felt I don't want to force it. I don't want to sit down behind my computer and just stare at a blank screen for the rest of the day or the evening. I'm just going to pop down on the couch next to my wife, play on the Switch because things are not really going for me.
Also not only with side projects, but also with the chores around the house. I'm not able to get around to all of them. I'm not able to finish them. I'm just not feeling it. So one of the things is decompressing. So I'm going to play, just play video games. And currently it's Zelda Echoes of Wisdom, which is a very awesome game, which I really enjoy. I'm a big Zelda fan, have been since the Super Nintendo. I've played almost every game that there was. I haven't completed them all, but I enjoy playing games.
And the other item I am going to do want to progress on my side projects is I want to get my content strategy in order. So I want to learn more about the different social networks, how I can create content for it specifically, and also derive content from the podcast, from this video recording, from the audio. And I want to know how I can improve that. And for those that watching the video, I haven't switched to my desktop view. This is also new that I'm recording an entire podcast with only my face camera, which feels kind of naked, I guess.
But that's what I'm doing, because I feel it's also important to share when things are not going as great, but I have found a path forward. So I'm not in a dark place. I was just not able to progress, but I think I found the strategy to do that. So I'm going to get my content strategy in order, and that's how to create the content, but also automating, because that's something that also combines with coding. I'm also going to look into completing my SEO project for the robots, the DHT crawlers.
And what also helps, aside from sitting behind the desk, is every morning, or at least the mornings that I'm not working, I'm taking a walk very early, like a quarter past six, or 30 minutes past six, half past six, I think it's called. And it's now autumn and it's getting darker and colder outside. So I've been walking around here in the neighborhood, and around the time that I walk through the fields, basically, outside of the village that I live in, is that's when the sun starts to come up. So there are some pretty pictures there. You can see them now. You should be able to see them if you want to edit them in, which is also stuff that I'm still learning.
And I find it a really calming experience. So I like the cold. So it's like five to ten degrees Celsius out there. I don't know what it is in Fahrenheit. And I walk up until today, I walk there in my shorts and my short sleeve t-shirt. And that's fun. And it really wakes me up. It's a refresher in the morning. Sometimes I listen to a podcast, sometimes I listen to music, but I find that for me, that's a really good start of the day.
And yeah, that together with getting my content strategy in order and just decompressing, spending time, gaming, but also with my family, let's get back on track. If you want more fine grained update than the podcast next week, follow me on Twitter, Instagram, whatever you'd like. Oh, it's not Twitter anymore, it's X, but follow me on YouTube. I might even start sharing some shorts if I get my content strategy in order. Just follow me and I'll publish a new episode next week. Bye.
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