My portfolio had been live for weeks with problems I kept ignoring. The homepage was pulling from the wrong data source. The Resources page had links going nowhere. The Shop page had fake products with made-up reviews. A placeholder icon where visual interest should be. No Open Graph images for social sharing. The Swipefile wasn't in the navigation. And there was no way for someone to support the work.
Seven things. All small. All embarrassing in the "I showed this to someone and they immediately noticed" way.
The technique
There's a technique called Ralph Wiggum — named after a character known for doing things his own way. The idea is simple: write out every known issue as a numbered story, keep each one scoped to a single commit, and blast through them sequentially without overthinking.
No sprint planning. No prioritization matrix. Just: here's what's broken, fix it, next.
STORY-001 through STORY-007. Each one a commit.
What got fixed
The homepage was showing swipefile entries in the Writing section instead of actual blog posts. Built things in the wrong order — swipefile came before blog posts, so the homepage was still wired to the old source.
The Resources page had guides listed with "New" and "Recommended" badges but no actual links. Changed them to "Coming Soon." At least that's honest.
The Shop page was the worst offender. Mock product data from a template — star ratings and prices for things that don't exist. Stripped it down to a single "Coming Soon" message.
Open Graph images were missing entirely. If someone shared a link on Twitter or LinkedIn, blank preview. Invisible to the site owner, but it's the first impression for everyone else.
Why this works
The Ralph Wiggum approach only works for a specific kind of task: small fixes where the solution is obvious and the only blocker is motivation. You wouldn't use this for a new feature or an architectural decision. But for the backlog of "I know exactly what's wrong and I just haven't done it" — it creates momentum.
There's something about numbering them as stories. STORY-001 done. STORY-002 done. By the fourth one you're in a flow state and the rest feel inevitable.
The constraint matters: each story has to be one commit. If it can't be one commit, it's a real task, not a Ralph.
I'd been looking at these seven issues for weeks. Any one of them would've been quick to fix. But as a list of seven things, they felt like work. Numbering the stories and committing to "just blast through them" turned procrastination debt into actual shipping.
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