Focused, yet, somewhere else...

Today has been one of the easier days for the past few weeks, its time for an update.

While its really cool to have regular subscribers asking me to post some more content, some more new ideas, I wanted to take a moment to discuss with you the skill of coping with heavy workload from multiple projects.

The picture of that disaster area is my personal office in Maine. Each screen represents a different project I'm currently working. I should have taken the picture last week when I had three laptops to strengthen my example!

Every single one of these projects is a very important obligation to me. Like any other project, there are naturally holds, emergencies, workarounds and communication overhead. This means that each project can be a bit of a hurry-and-wait scenario.

When you have multiple hurry-and-wait scenarios, you have the opportunity to context switch from your "hold" project to something else where the path is clear, to remain as productive as possible at all times. In theory, this works. In practice, CPUs will always be better at context switching than human beings, and too much switching ends up with a net result of... well.. nothing done.

People say that its essential to focus, to master the skill of doing one thing at a time, but I lack that tunnel vision; I find it very hard to cast a blind eye to any of my peripherals, because they are all important.

So I'm trying to work on a sweet spot in the balance between keeping a presence in multiple places, yet focusing my energy in one place at a time.

• A blackberry really helps to stay attuned to multiple clients
  
• Its nice to strictly enforce certain time slots to a specific project when possible
• Better managed and longer-term projects mean less context switching on my behalf

Any tricks work for you?