New Countdown Timer & Getting Things Done

Hey friend,

First off, we’ve got a new plugin for you; introducing the Countdown Timer! This is a really fun one, with slick design and a bunch of different use cases, and I’m excited to hear what y’all think about it. You can check it out further down in this email.

And now, on to my favorite topic — me.

🕺🕺🕺

I’ve been struggling to get things done recently.

So much so that I decided I to buy the book Getting Things Done, by David Allen.

It’s interesting to me how the basic principals of all of these productivity books isn’t anything fancy or even very surprising. Their solution isn’t really a tool or a specific system or repeating a mantra in the mirror each morning. It’s just the basic, simple things that we all already know we should be doing — brain dumps, to-do lists, and good old-fashioned calendaring.

Indeed, I’ve slowly been getting back into spending some real time planning and organizing out my weeks a bit more and I already feel a little lighter and like I’m able to accomplish a bit more each day. But I'm also coming to terms with a hard truth: it just takes longer to do things well.

In the world of entrepreneurship, freelancers, and web designers, we often don’t know when or how to let our professional selves grow up. A lot of our success in the beginning years can be attributed to drive, late nights, and a lot of fake-it-till-you-make-it (”yes-of-course-I-can-do-that-for-you”) mentality.

But as time goes on, our businesses grow, and we start to learn what it really means to be a good business owner, we begin to realize all the little details involved in doing a really good job with the things we say “yes” to and the work we take on. Those big little details. To our younger professional selves, these big little details often feel like insignificant things that we could skip or ignore in the pursuit of “productivity”, but our older and wiser professional selves realize how big those “little” things actually are, and what a huge impact they can have on our business in the long-run.

Part of what spending time each week writing out my to-do items and adding them to my calendar makes me viscerally realize is how much time all of these things take. To be honest, the hardest part of this whole “Getting Things Done” process is simply forcing myself to be honest about the work involved and the time required to do things really well.

I’ve found myself feeling like my eyes were bigger than my stomach more often than I’d like to admit lately, and it’s left me overloaded, overwhelmed, and generally hemorrhaging productivity. I think that I have a tendency to take on more work than I can really do a good job with because my younger professional self was so used to saying “yes” to everything that was placed on my proverbial plate. 😋 But alas, it’s time for me to grow up a bit, put on my big-boy entrepreneur pants, and come to grips with portion control. (note to future self - never write a newsletter on an empty stomach)

Anyways, if this isn’t your struggle and you have no problem saying “no” when you know you’re at capacity, then I applaud and admire you. For the rest of us overcommitting suckers, I think the best we can do is to remind ourselves that doing really good work takes time, and sometimes we have to allow ourselves the opportunity to say “no”.

Keep Building,
Will

Countdown Plugin (NEW)

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Display a Countdown Timer on your website for an event. Choose from three preset styles or fine-tune your customizations with the included copy-and-paste CSS.

You can add this countdown timer into a code block anywhere on your website or add it to your announcement bar to display it everywhere.

Just check out the demo page here, or watch the demo video here.

PURCHASE

Growing your Website Business the Agency Way, with Kelsey Gilbert-Kreiling?

Ever wondered what it's like to run a successful web design agency? In this episode of Somewhat Useful, we sit down with none other than Kelsey Gilbert-Kreiling, co-founder of Week of the Website, a Squarespace agency celebrating its 10th year in business.

We get into it all in this episode. Kelsey tells us about:

The accidental birth of their 'week-long website' process.
How a taxi cab concussion led to scaling the business
The challenges of balancing entrepreneurship with parenthood
Why even successful agency owners never feel like they've 'made it'

Whether you're a solo designer dreaming of growth or an agency owner looking for solidarity, this episode is packed with insights and real talk about the entrepreneurial journey. Don't miss Kelsey's advice on making tough decisions, setting boundaries with clients, and why the only wrong choice in business is to do nothing.

Listen on Apple Podcast
Listen on Spotify
Listen Everywhere Else

Big thanks to the season 3 sponsor, Termageddon — the ONLY privacy policy generator founded by an actual attorney. Their generator asks you questions about your business, finds out which privacy laws apply to you, and then generators the policies specific to your website’s needs. The best part is that Termageddon monitors new laws and will auto-update your policies as needed. It’s a true, set-it-and-forget-it option for website owners. Use promo code “somewhat” for 10% off your first purchase.

And if you’re a web designer, you can get something extra.

Ask Us Anything, with Christy Price

Hope you’re not sick of us already cause we’re gonna be doing an Ask Us Anything next Thursday at 1pm Eastern. We have some fun, secret, news to be sharing and we’ll also be answering any and all of your questions about Squarespace, web design, development, and more. This is always just a fun time to hang out and chat, so I hope to see you there.

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Code Curious

Code Curious is my membership for professional Squarespace designers. As a member, you get 20% off all plugins & multi-use licenses, exclusive access to the Code Catalogue (with over 100 copy-and-paste code snippets), the Targeting Library (over 270 Squarespace CSS Selectors), and exclusive tutorials.

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