I’ve always done the former, especially when you consider blogging. I’ve normally got at least half a dozen personal projects going, and when you add in the additional dozen for my day job, it’s all gets a bit ridiculous.
When I look at my lack of progress on any one thing, I console myself by thinking that someday I will finish everything at once, which will just explode. Yeah, it took me fifteen years to finish a book, but when I did I actually had ten books to publish all at once! Neat, huh?
Except I don’t think it works. Without focus, little progress is made, and it’s hard for our minds to switch gears that well. Writing about technology requires a very different mental state compared to writing fantasy fiction. Editing an essay isn’t the same as typing a blog entry.
But I want to do all these different things. I don’t really want to stop any of them, even temporarily. Despite that, I think I’m going to have to . I just can’t do everything all at once. I need to pick a project and get it banged out, then focus 100% on editing it, and then finish so I can go to the next thing.
Which of these groups do you find yourself in? Are you happy there, or do you think the other might work better?
I actually do the latter, and there are problems with that as well, at least for me. Focusing 100% on a single project often means I get bored with it, then frustrated, then sloppy with it because I get in a rush when I hit my least favorite parts of the process. What I’ve found works better for me is to only allow multiple projects when they’ve passed certain stages–in a knit or crochet piece, I’ll only cast on a new project when I’m at, say, finishing stages of another, or after primary construction. Or I can only have a specific amount of yarn engaged, or something that keeps me from hating a thing before I’m finished with it.
LikeLike