There\u2019s an art to deciding how many projects to commit to at one time. Clearly, the most common mistake is to take on too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Almost every business complains of not having enough resources, but another way of expressing the same thing is \u201cwe\u2019ve taken on too much for the resources we\u2019ve got\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Almost everyone, when you ask them how they are, is \u201cso busy\u201d. But another way of saying that is “I\u2019ve taken on too much for the amount of time I have available\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet the answer isn’t as straightforward as saying “fine, I’ll only take on one thing at a time then”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For example, say you wanted to write a book and train for a marathon, and outside those goals you had absolutely no other commitments. Choosing to focus purely on one of the two probably wouldn\u2019t be any better than doing both at once: you can\u2019t possibly write for 12 hours per day or train for 12 hours per day, so if you only pursued one you\u2019d be wasting time that could otherwise be used productively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So what is<\/em> the answer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In general, the best balance seems to be to have one main, super-important project with an aggressive deadline \u2013 plus other projects that you fit in whenever you get a chance. When the main project is finished, you can promote one of the others to be \u201cmain project\u201d and give it an aggressive deadline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This approach works, because there\u2019s always pressure and the slightest delay will threaten the deadline. If you\u2019re working on three simultaneous projects with far more relaxed deadlines, your attention is divided and the day-to-day urgency isn\u2019t there \u2013 so you\u2019re paradoxically more likely to miss loose deadlines than tight ones<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This brings us to a challenge: deciding on the super-important project is harder than any other aspect of getting it done. It involves choosing what\u2019s going to have the most impact, admitting you\u2019re not going to work on other things that could be rewarding, and possibly even saying \u201cno\u201d to people. That\u2019s why most people don\u2019t bother doing it, have too many things on the go, and don\u2019t get any of them finished well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How to avoid taking on too much, and why you’re (paradoxically) more likely to miss a loose deadline than a tight one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n