What helps you with creative block?

But I feel like I’m now putting off my original project but I just don’t know how to get back into it, where to even begin.

Oh, this is very typical. I'd say there are a few ways you can go with this: Give yourself rules where you need to follow through, even if you're not inspired or working off motivation. Most projects will go through periods where following through is less fun, but you sort of have to have rules to keep up with it, or else you always get to that point and fall off.

On the other hand — it's also a chance to shelf a project and explicitly treat it like a learning experience for the next thing you want to start fresh. If you're deliberate about this, it's perfectly fine. Just try not to find yourself caught in between.

Any apps you use to collect your ideas?

I personally have three places I collect and manage ideas:

• Figma for things which can best be expressed in a "vision board" format. Images/text inspiration sorted spatially helps keep related ideas clumped together in a way which lets me get them out of my head. It gives me permission to step away and come back later. If it's still useful, then it wasn't just a stroke of inspiration high — but an actually useful idea. If I come back and it's not as good an idea as before — GREAT. I didn't waste my own time, or in work contexts, anyone else's time, working on it.
• Personal kanban board for more solid, structured TODO-esque tasks. My columns are "Backlog", "TODO", "Wet Clay", "Proof of Concept", "MVP", and "Production". This helps me stay disciplined about my approach. I try to not let things linger in the middle too long. Any random idea can go in the "backlog". It moves to "TODO", when it's something I want to take on. "Wet clay" is nibbling at it. "Proof of Concept" is when it's ready for my own personal evaluation or ready to be described to others for validation. "MVP" means there's something usable, and "Production" means it has shipped.
• And then for individual projects, I use the README of the project to stay disciplined about the purpose and direction of the project. It can include notes about "possible future features" if it's the right place for it, but mostly it's about co-locating notes with the work, and being explicit about purpose. This helps avoid scope creep.

I just dumped a lot on you, and I very much had to discover what worked for me, so please don't just assume these ideas fit your brain, but maybe it will give you some food for thought!

That was me, after looking at a few good sites, I decided to revamp the initial, although I keep learning things that I can do better, the more I see/read wiťh my site in mind, the more ideas I get for improvements. I'll get to that though.

I would put together a mood board and get some design inspired from some design websites. Then I would write down some information about the app i'm building just to get a feel for it and what it should have. Then start with a basic skeleton design and go from there.

When I'm stuck, I try to write down what done looks like. Be as clear as possible. Perhaps with a pen and paper.

When my minds racing, I do what I can to slow down. Which means reading a printed on paper book or short-story, writing a hand written journal entry, drawing with pencil and paper. Maybe go for a walk until I'm tired.

Here is my simple systematic workflow that works for me:

What @ben has written is pretty similar to mine with small variations (maybe we have similar mindsets, Ben 😄).

My main "brain organizer" is writing.
Having tons of ideas is the norm (I think). The trick is to say "NO" to some of them, and write the rest.
For me, writing isn't only for keeping notes, but also for clarifying & organizing the random thoughts I have in mind.

1. Start with the main goal: why am I doing this?
Writing the goal is much similar to writing user stories (As a X I want to Y so that I can Z).
In your case of creating a personal website, maybe a line like:

I want to create my personal website so that it increases my online presence.

The list could go on and on for extra features, such as:

I want to add a list of projects in my website to...

2. Thinking about the steps that need to be done.
The order of steps does not matter, they can order them later. And of course, any step that has no value to the main goal should be deleted.
If more reading/researching is necessary (which is totally the norm in developer life), I add a nested step.
I also collect links to resources (videos, readings... etc) at this step.

3. Now comes the grind.
I start "doing" in the same order of steps that I wrote earlier. While I'm working on some steps, I can re-order the steps or add more steps as needed (absolutely normal, as long as the extra steps serve the main goal).

I manage all that in Notepad++, super handy and simple. You can use Notion too (all my frontend friends prefer Notion).

Here goes an example in your case, I recorded a quick video on the fly of my thoughts flow (writing, grouping, and re-ordering ideas):

• Side note for the colors:

I'm more into backend. I've gone recently through these two videos to find colors for small React apps, and they worked for me:

youtube.com/watch?v=KMS3VwGh3HY

youtube.com/watch?v=mq8LYj6kRyE

I also found this one to save my time of finding the correct shades:
uicolors.app/

Have a nice journey with your project, and welcome to DEV 👋