Paulo asked commented on Internal Scorecard #1,
"How is your planning/managing (in terms of life) when you have too many projects going on?"
I think there's three questions here:
1. How do you coordinate multiple projects that don't overlap?
2. How do you know how much is too much to be effective?
3. If you accidentally get into that "too much to be effective" category, what do you do?
First, how to coordinate multiple projects that don't overlap?
That's easy. First, you realize that you can only do one thing at a time, so you prioritize just one thing and realize everything else will come in a distant secondary place in prioritization. You basically must do this, because you can't do two different things simultaneously. So you pick what's most highly prioritized, and you do that.
Last week, my split of focused building hours was 30+ GiveGetWin, 10 Consulting, 6 Personal, 2 Writing. That's about normal for a successful week: when I look at hours, I rarely see even splits. It usually comes down along those lines.
With multiple projects, it's even more important than normal to have clear priorities. You need to sit down with paper and identify what's important. I recommend using paper and not a computer for this, and especially don't get distracted and multi-task this with email, internet usage, etc.
Then, you need to go into Terminator-mode on what's most important and get it done. Flitting around is dangerous always; it's especially dangerous when you have multiple things going on. You work your top priority until it's done.
Second, how much is too much to be effective?
Lately, I'm a believer in doing less things at the same time. If you're doing 15 different initiatives, what are the odds that they're all equally valuable? It's very, very low.
Lately, my life has been about cutting complexity and cutting areas of focus and cutting projects (and turning down intriguing ones). I get great ideas all the time that would be incredibly exciting to run, but the fact is I already have a few areas of interest where I can clearly make huge gains by putting creative time in there.
While adding more is generally not a great idea if you've got very important things to work on anyways, there's three kinds of work that are reasonably safe to add on:
1. Discrete things that start and end relatively quickly: Writing an essay, a client project, etc.
2. Things on autopilot: I write this blog regularly as a matter of course. I've been doing it so long it doesn't even count as work. Likewise, if you've played piano for ten years, sitting down and playing each evening isn't going to be as mentally taxing as someone, for instance, learning a new piece on the paino.
3. Things that hook into other key main areas of your life: Right now, I need to improve the nonprofit governance and get best practices in place (meeting minutes, transparency, etc) at the charity. So I'd happily help out an external organization with any of their meetings or finance, because it fits in with what I'm doing. If you're developing skills and resources more efficiency than you would if you self-studied and they're important skills, then it can make sense to do something.
Rule of thumb, by the way -- more than six "big areas that matter" is always too many. For people who have a lot of creative energy, 3 might be the sweet spot. There's of course advantages to doing just 1 at different times in your life.
If you wind up with too much going on and you're ineffective, then what?
I just spoke with a client who has around eight major business campaigns going on. They're all critical and can't be canceled.
This is just barely over the overwhelm threshold. So, our gameplan is like this:
*Pick 2 areas each week to work on that are most important.
*Prioritize working on campaigns that will finish and close.
Of those eight areas, four are ones that, after between 30 and 200 hours of work, will be complete and only need minor maintenance going forwards. So if you wind up with too much on your plate, you might paradoxically decide to work on your fifth area of priority intensely if you can get it done and closed successfully in a week or two. Get that book that's almost finished written, just finish your damn taxes already, get the tech in place, or whatever.
There's a certain dignity in quitting things, and if you realize you're actually really never going to do something that's on your campaigns, then quitting might be the right call. If you need to quit projects with other people, let me advise you this: Do it slowly and intelligently.
I've done it both ways in the past, and I'll never quit a project quickly again. The old adage about tearing the bandage off fast is wrong. People you've worked intensively with, partnered with, or so on will be important to you later in life, almost without fail. If it takes you a few weeks (or even a couple months) longer to elegantly extricate yourself from a situation and not leave people hanging, do it. Great allies in the world are rare, and people who you treated well on the way out the door are willing to go to war with you later, help you, and so on. They also tend to know you really well and become sources of good advice. So if you're going to quit something with other people, quit slowly and leave everyone in a good place.
Finally, and this ties in with all three questions -- you need an elegant "capture and prioritize system." We can get more into this in another post, you can use Getting Things Done, or whatever, but you need a good capture/prioritization system or you're going to go insane. So get one of those in place ASAP, too.