It doesn’t need to be perfect or fully finished

Any missing projects or website parts that are not done yet? Just iterate later on after going live. This will allow you to take steps forward and optimize each time you work on it. And you can work on it whenever you want and feel good about it. No stress.

Aiming for perfectionism is a very good mindset. On the other side, working until 100% perfectionism can also be bad. You might had this experience already. Putting right imperfections over and over again, ends in stress because it’s paralyzing everything else. Making something perfect takes a lot of time, which restricts you from working on other things. Less time ends up in less efficiency, profit, and reliability.

Commit to one

There was a time, I used to create about 30 portfolio design versions because I wasn’t happy with it anymore a few weeks later. Some of them have been already developed. But I started from scratch again and again. Exactly that kept me away from launching it. Commit to the one you like and stick with it until it’s completely done. Set yourself a challenging deadline for your final design. And after that, another one for putting it online. That helps you massively with your productivity.

Check out Cyber and DashFolio →

Inspire yourself (carefully)

Inspiration is important, but can also be dangerous at the same time. You might look for inspiration before you start your projects, which is pretty normal and good. That can be on Dribbble, Pinterest, Behance, or on other platforms like Awwwards or SiteInspire. Where it’s crucial not to seek out inspiration is at that time, when you think your personal website’s design is done. You might see another nice website somewhere and think, hmmm I also want to build a website like this, so let’s wipe out your latest portfolio designs and start from scratch. Now, it happened. That moment prevents you (happened to me a few times) from putting it out there. As I already wrote above, commitment is all about it. In the end, it all comes down to committing and getting shit done.

Simplicity is key

Just keep it simple. The work on your website is more important than your website itself. Try building a container for your projects and present them in an elegant, but simple way. Make your work speak for itself.

Keep it up to date and iterate

Your portfolio will never be finished or perfect as written above. Update your projects and iterate on your web design on the go. This allows you to put it out there earlier and relieve stress.

What Platform should you use?

A lot of people use WordPress with theme templates to build a portfolio. There are pretty good ones out there, but most of them are not good enough or are very restricted in the design you can build there if you do have not a lot of coding experience.

But there is an alternative: Framer. With Framer you can build fully custom websites without using code with a fully visual canvas. I use it for over a year now and wouldn’t go back to WordPress or Webflow anymore. It speeds up your process insanely and allows you to build your custom-designed portfolio for all screen sizes in a few hours.