Quiet but Busy
It’s been quiet here publicly. But behind the scenes, there’s been steady progress.
Most of the work in the last year has been researching, building — and frequent rebuilding — of infrastructure (including a lot of coding, which I’ve enjoyed learning), and even legal stuff to ensure I’m doing things right.
And unfortunately, I only get a few hours a week to work on this project. I have a full time job in tech and two young kids, plus I refuse to let my self-care slip (for example, I recently finished my first half marathon). And yes, I use AI a little but I don’t trust it for most tasks (I’ll write about that some time). Moving forward, I am hoping to commit more time — if I get the right signals from you.
All that said, there’s finally some content on this site, and I’ve built a solid foundation to pump out the most important stuff over the next few months. Check out the roadmap to see what’s coming!
For those of you who are interested, below is a little timeline describing the winding road of getting where we are now.
Timeline
Here’s how things played out over the last year:
The Beginning
May to June, 2024
- While the idea started long ago, even before I started my PhD, I didn’t spin up this website until May 2024.
- Originally, the website was my name dot com — tonyingram.com — but I knew that would be a placeholder. Some people have success with a “personal brand” but I know it’s not for me.
- The website started on the Ghost platform — I knew I wanted to build a membership website, and that seemed like an easy way to start.
- Designed my site and posted my first blog post on an old Facebook page that I used for a previous project.
- My second post in June described my intentions for this website.
- And if you see the homepage today, it looks like I haven’t done anything since then. But in reality, I haven’t taken a break longer than a week!
Migrations & Redesign
July to August, 2024
- First, it’s worth acknowledging that I had a major career change, so that slowed me down.
- More importantly, I quickly realized that Ghost was not going to allow me to build what I had envisioned.
- Therefore, I started a migration to good old WordPress with a few plugins and some custom code.
- I spent a ton of time tweaking the design — I know it doesn’t look like much, but I’m not a web developer so it took time to learn how, and get it to a point where I felt satisfied.
Creating a Skill Learning Database
September 2024 to January 2025
- The foundation of the website was always going to be a database of skill learning research. This will provide the foundation upon which personalized guidance can be given.
- But I had to come up with a way to capture the essential details of each study I review, and display it in a sensible way for site members. For an example, see the review for the Dali 2004 study.
- This required a lot of learning about how to set this up, and then a lot of custom coding. Good thing I enjoy learning!
- Then, I had to find a way to summarize many studies into a single topic, and summarize that for site members.
- Finally, I published the first topic page: Spaced Practice — a simple but foundational concept in skill learning.
- And with that, the foundation is set to start populating the database according to the roadmap.
Rebranding & Company Establishment
February to April, 2025
- You would think that I’d enter a focused “content creation” phase… but nope.
- I was unsatisfied with my personal name as the domain, and wanted a clear separation from this project and other parts of my life. So I decided it was time to think hard about a brand and establish a legal entity.
- Luckily, I have a friend who works in the branding/marketing/advertising space, and he helped me think though the options. For reasons I’ll explain some elsewhere, we landed on: Pavlonic.
- Then I set up a corporation, completed the necessary legal steps, opened a business account, etc. But this didn’t take long compared to finalizing the name.
- And I haven’t even started a good brand and design overhaul… but that will come later, because now comes the important part.
Present: Content Creation Time!
May 2025
- One year later, I finally feel ready to dive into focused content creation.
- This will start with the topics I outline in the roadmap, and each topic will involve reviewing several studies in detail.
- I’ll post updates on the blog as I go — especially if I find a topic I’d like to write about but that doesn’t really require a full page that should be updated over time.
If you’re interested in following along please consider subscribing!
Lessons Learned
Despite having had a modestly successful blog in the past, and some intense company-building experience since, I still managed to make a bunch of mistakes. I really thought that this time, it would be smooth sailing… but it took almost a year just to set this project up.
But it’s mostly because of my style of work: I enjoy going down rabbit holes, double-checking for accuracy (which is why I limit my AI use here significantly), and doing things the hard way — as long as I believe it’s the right way.
One thing I’ve come to appreciate is that chipping away at something on such a small part-time basis (a few hours a week) really does work. It might feel pointless sometimes: like solving some technical challenge to get a table populating data just the way you want it to (I’d often think “why, who even cares?”) — but just like training for a fitness goal, you have to trust the process.
Consistency is the most important thing.
