It's OK to feel like you have a thousand things on your plate

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On top of a full-time job, I write for three publications, two of which are paid, one is my own. I just quit a digital marketing side gig of two years. I’m always working on a client website. I’m writing a fiction novella of 30,000 words. I’m designing the UI for an awesome app. I’m building a list of 250 interesting group questions for an ebook. I’m at 165 right now.

Medium’s Ev Williams said you have to "do fewer things" in order to succeed. But to stop working on one of my projects would be like consciously choosing not to use one of my healthy arms. I’d forget and use it the next day without thinking.

If I took Ev’s advice, I’d cut out everything and focus on doing just one of these projects. Instead, I’m keeping all of them.

I look at it like an investment: Instead of putting all my eggs in one basket, I have a diversified portfolio of projects. Each one has the potential to scale quickly and overtake the others, but until one does, I’ll be working on all of them.

Let’s call these two theories of early entrepreneurship the single-project approach and the multi-project approach.

• The single-project approach is the disciplined focus on one project. One problem + 0ne solution = 0ne project. Hammer away.
• The multi-project approach is the disciplined focus on diverse projects. Various problems + numerous solutions = many projects. Full plate.

I used the word "disciplined" in both definitions purposely; it takes discipline to focus on just one project and it takes a different kind of discipline to focus on multiple projects. They look completely different.

Single project entrepreneurs are told to say "no" to everything so they can stay focused. Cut your projects down to one and just do that one really well.

To be a multi-project entrepreneur, it takes the ability to know when to say "no" and when to say "yes."

If you can do it, the benefits of the multi-project approach are many. Here are some that I have experienced in my journey as a multi-project entrepreneur.

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8 benefits of the multi-project approach

1. Never burnout. I don’t limit my focus to one direction. If I’m sick of writing for a client, I design my app. If I don’t feel like looking at a screen, I get on the phone and call my development partner or another entrepreneur for inspiration. If I want to relax, I write my novel. If I only have 15 minutes, I think of questions for the ebook. I don’t limit myself to one creative outlet.
2. Idea cross-pollination. Creativity is defined as making connections. What works for one project may work for another, achieving a sort of economy of scale. The tools, platforms, and connections I learned while working on one project I use for all my projects now — Slack, Basecamp, Reddit, and Medium, to name a few examples. One project involved learning Swift. It failed. But I learned how to better communicate with developers in three other projects.
3. Network growth. I designed a physical journal. I’ve never designed a journal before. To learn how, I called a journal maker on Kickstarter in Brooklyn for advice. She directed me to her producer in San Francisco. The producer told me what I needed to research. Without this project, I would never have met them. Projects in different fields force you to meet people in those fields, forming a strong network that will help you later down the road.
4. THE BEAUTIFUL MERGE. This is a huge benefit of multiple projects. The journal I designed failed as far as ecommerce. But it helped build the brand of the app I’m working on. I now have custom promo items ready to go when the app launches in a couple months. The beautiful merge is when one project rolls into another, and bolsters it, making effective use of both. A friend of mine developed a social networking app that had a strong release but faded into nothing. Instead of toiling to keep it alive, he copy and pasted the best bits of the code (and his experience) into another app project he is working on. Nothing wasted.
5. Hyper-productivity. When I get a couple hours, I focus on one project at a time. When I hit a roadblock in one, I jump into another. My "breaks" are other projects. Example: I’m writing a blog on entrepreneurship. I don’t feel like searching the web for research, so I open my novel and pound out the next chapter. I lose my pace with the novel, so I swing over and write a 200-word book introduction for a friend who needs it by tomorrow. The deadline fuels me. The switching between projects keeps my focus high and fresh.
6. Risk mitigation. If the one project you’re working on fails, you have to start all over. This is the same with investments. There’s less risk in a mutual fund than in a single company stock. With multiple projects in the hopper, when one fails, you have the other ones you’re working on to jump into, bringing the lessons with you.
7. You learn to fail twice as fast. The more projects you work on, the less attached to your projects you become. The less attached you are to your projects, the better you can accept failure. The more failure you run into, the more lessons you learn. The more lessons you learn, the more likely you will succeed.
8. More income streams. If your single project is non-paying, it will drain your time and your bank account. With the multi-project approach, I pay for my non-paying projects with my paying projects. Motivationally and financially, they play off of each other. I’ve been able to pay off my car loan and pay a development team for my app by selling digital marketing and writing services on the side.

I’m not saying the multi-project approach is better than the single project approach. Both are needed. And it depends on who you are and what projects you’re working on. I just don’t want you to give up on (or never start) something that could be great because you are currently "buried" by another project. You can do both!

But keep this in mind if you work on multiple projects at a time: You are in for the long play. And this is where the multi-project approach can be frustrating. It’s easy for a day to feel unproductive when I move three projects forward an inch instead of one project forward a mile. It takes discipline and patience as your projects grow slowly.

It takes a certain type of personality to be so spread out. You must be action prone, with a thought process of ready-fire-aim. It will drive a perfectionist insane.

Multi-project entrepreneurs will benefit by:

• Mastering to-do lists and reminders to circle back.
• Finding routines.
• Eating well, sleeping well, and exercising well.
• Teaming up and delegating as much as possible.
• Drawing your plate. Try it. Grab a pen and piece of paper. The paper is your "plate." Fill in the plate with your projects as smaller circles proportional to their importance and urgency. Use this as a visual guide to know where you are and to help you prioritize.

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