How to prioritize your Online Portfolio and make sure you Launch

This episode is part of a series called Portfolio Principles. In this series, I help people to build a more effective portfolio. Get weekly portfolio building tips.
All opinions my own.

Doing something you dislike is hard. Even if you know it is important.

I don’t have to convince you about the importance of your online portfolio. You know that it can have a huge impact on your career. More impact than it has today.

We live in an era where communicating skills is just as important as owning skills. A great idea is only as good as the presentation around it. Presenting yourself is a key to success.

You recognize the value, but there are a million things which you would rather be doing than working on your portfolio. Fun things, important things and useless things. Even if you enjoy working on your portfolio, prioritizing it is hard. It is hard to spend focused time on your portfolio.

So why aren’t you working on your portfolio right now? You aren’t working on your portfolio because you are waiting for that perfect moment. Maybe that is the moment you feel like working on it. Maybe you are waiting for a gap in your schedule. Please stop fooling yourself.

When did you feel like working on your portfolio? Can you even remember the last time you had gap in your schedule?

You will never have gaps because you fill time automatically. It is a habit. A gap in your schedule won’t magically appear, neither does the time to work on your portfolio.

The perfect moment to start working on your portfolio is right now.

You will only be able to work on your portfolio if you make time for it. The only way to make time is by saying “no” to other things. Say no to Netflix. Say no to Facebook. Even say no to your side project.

Say no to anything that distracts you from working on your portfolio.

Work on your portfolio at least once a week. Preferably on the same day. Working on your portfolio needs to become a habit. It needs to become a routine you stop questioning.

Apart from finding time, you should improve how you spend your dedicated portfolio time. When you finally get to work on your portfolio you feel unproductive. Your time is precious and you want immediate results. You can have immediate results, but not if you continue like this.

Because you haven’t defined your finish line, it feels like you aren’t getting there.

You are running without your eyes on the finish line. At some point you will be out of energy. You won’t make it till the end. You will be left with a portfolio that you will never launch.

You need to have a plan. A plan with a destination and with realistic steps towards it.

Whenever you get to spend your precious time on your portfolio, you shouldn’t be figuring out what to do. You should just be executing your plan. This will make you feel like you are making progress, because you are. You will have immediate results.

So what does a good plan look like? Start by choosing your content management system that fits you.

The best CMS is the one that enables you to do what you do best already.

If you are a designer, this means a CMS that enables you to focus on the design, not on the code. If you are more of a developer, this means a CMS with many high quality themes and the freedom to code. Maybe what you do best cannot be applied on your portfolio. Don’t worry about it. Choose a CMS that takes you by the hand.

After choosing your CMS, list out the pages you want to eventually have. This list is your destination. Now rank your pages based on priority. These are your steps towards your destination.

Pick the page at the top of your list and focus on just that one. Write the content, implement it into the design and launch it.

Create and launch the page before continuing on the next one.

Don’t postpone your launch once all of your pages are ready. You will hardly make it. Launch one page at the time.

This episode is part of a series called Portfolio Principles. In this series, I help people to build a more effective portfolio. Get weekly portfolio building tips.

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