FOCUS on 1 goal vs "multi-tasking" several projects?? Whats better?

Hi JM95

In reality, you are likely to have multiple projects to focus on, so prioritising and focus become hyper-important. It's not so hard.

The worst thing is, never getting down to any project at all - reading emails, sales pages, maintenance jobs, purposeless Skyping/Facebooking, etc. But this b*ggers you whether you have 1 project on your list or - whether you have 10. It's your basic approach to projects/tasks which is crucial.

The thing is, how you manage your tasks. To do this, you just make sure that every active project of yours (the ones not active yet can go on a different project list) has one or more "next tasks" associated with it and these all appear on your task list, or to do list. Now, every morning, first thing, you sort your task list into order and have 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 items on it probably. A good way to do this is to have a "Now" list, a "Next" list and a "Soon" list. Your Now list has 4-5-6-7-8 times on it, as I said, your Next list maybe another 10-20, etc.

The numbers are approximate - just to give you an idea. But the point is, you can scan Now, Next and Soon, and juggle the tasks around to make you happy. Then work your way through the Now list right now.

I always start with my emails first thing and that takes me 20 minutes or so. Anything prompting me to take more than 2 minutes on an email becomes a task. So I don't get dragged off on something I didn't mean to (or, at least, it happens less :-| LOL)

Then, when I my morning routine - starting with emails - out of the way, I get to the task which is moving one of my projects forward a step. Yesterday and the day before I was concentrating on one particular project to do with redeveloping a site. Someone else is also working on that and my work on it for the last 2 days moved it forward.

Today I am going back to another project I need to move on and when I have a 2-3 hour chunk of time later today, this is the one I'll move forward.

So, that's how you manage multiple projects: make sure each active project has one or more tasks on your task lists, and then work through your tasks methodically. Then, once a week, look through all your lists - to dos and projects - move to dos around between your lists (this is much, much easier than trying to prioritise each to do - eg scoring it) and checking your projects lists to move projects from active to inactive or vice versa as your priorities change.

The To Do system I use is Getting Things Done by David Allen, and the method I use to apply it is the brilliantly simple The Secret Weapon - The Secret Weapon: Evernote and GTD smoothly integrated into TSW . This works well. Really well.

:-)

Malc

It depends on your experience. Some people have been doing this a long time, and have the experience to multitask successfully. Others are just starting out, and need to work on one project at a time and celebrate the small victories along the way.