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Ask YC: What's the greatest number of projects you can work on at once, successfully?

9 points by jraines ↗ HN
Right now I have a coding project I'm doing for work, one for a side for-profit thing, and one I'd like to do just for fun.

I'm trying to decide whether to do them with as little overlap as possible with the goal of total focus, or all at once with the hope of cross pollination of ideas.

What's your threshold and/or ideal? I realize this will vary a lot by individual, free time, complexity of the projects -- but I'm interested to hear some opinions of HN members on this.

20 comments

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icey
Just remember that "Total focus" means 100%

You can divvy that up however you see fit.

dats
The only issue I see with that is as the number of projects increases, the total focus decreases. The more projects you have on your plate, the more switching you have to do. So you may lose time getting back into gear and focusing.

On the other hand, insights from one project might help out another.

icey
That's my point. The most that you can give to any combination of projects is 100% total. If you have two projects, one of them will have to suffer, or you will be forced to give them both 50% focus.
dats
I'm saying something different though. If you have 2 projects, you won't be able to split your time as effectively so you may have 40% focus for each, and so on. As you take on more and more projects, the time it takes to get back into the groove increases. You are likely to spend a lot of time moving between projects and this will disrupt your overall focus.
icey
Ahhh now I see what you're saying. You make an excellent point.
mattmaroon
17
zenspider
yup yup...

I prefer the shotgun approach. In the last 6 months: 22 releases across 8 projects (with differing levels of inter-relatedness). I've worked on 19 other projects in that period of time (this number might be low as I polled the filesystem, not perforce).

mattmaroon
Ha, I was just giving a silly answer to what I thought was a really silly question, but I kind of agree with you about the shotgun approach, provided you're trying to build what people here would call a "lifestyle business" rather than a "startup".
pjackson
If you're talking about coding projects, then I like one at a time. Sometimes I split that to be one at work, one at home.

I find that when I flight a lot of other ideas when I already have a major project in the works, I end up with a lot of sparse git and svn repositories.

That's just my preference. I can handle a handful (5 or 6 maybe and still be effective?) but the context switching saps my productivity pretty fast.

vaksel
Are we talking about coding, or doing the whole thing(marketing etc..)? If the full project, then I'm a fan of going 100% into that one thing you believe most in.
jraines
Good question.

I was more talking about just the coding part. I agree if it's the whole 9 yards, it ought to be just one project at a time.

noodle
it depends on your definition of "work on", how you define a "project", and what you need to do to make a living.
run4yourlives
Key word being successfully.

1.

lux
Definitely. Any more than one and you're setting yourself up to fall.

How I've managed to put dual focus into two projects for a while (startup and my main company) is to focus solely on one for a certain length of time, then switch to the other and give that one 100%. But even that only works so well because a running business has certain day-to-day activities you need to do and can't neglect.

So if you're starting your own projects or startup, choose one and give it 100%, otherwise you're not giving any of your ideas the full shot they deserve.

astrec
Depends on the cost to context switch vs. other factors. For example, two similar projects might have enough overlap that the cost of switching contexts is outweighed by the benefit of not having to (re)learn the solution or part thereof.
thaiyoshi
I see one project as a luxury. It has to be interesting and you have to have ownership for one project to be the right answer. You also need a way to pay the bills. When working for someone else, my magic number is two so you don't end up getting stuck and waiting.
rahulgarg
The number has always been 2 for me. Maybe my brain is hyperthreaded. Maybe different for you.
aggieben
Here, here. 2 (maybe 3 depending on relatedness) for me.
walesmd
If it's just coding (as in a freelance job), I have found 3 to be my magic number. It's just enough I can switch out to another project when I get burned out but I maintain that "new project" burst of activity and the code stays fresh in my head.

A personal project, in which I am doing the design, marketing, monetization, business practices, everything - 1. It's a full-time commitment.

warwick
If given a choice, I prefer to work on one thing to the exclusion of all other things.

It takes me a day or two to really get into a project. Once I'm there, I find that I naturally cycle my focus between projects every three to four weeks. My biggest challenge to getting things done is the day when I finish off a project cycle and try to figure out what to work on next. If I don't have a clear idea, I flit between a half dozen or so potential projects until I dig my teeth into one.

I also to have 'little projects' on the side burner to work on for a couple hours if I'm feeling the need for a break without full-on switching into another project. These little projects tend to be things like 'learn how to do this in framework X' or 'write up a blog entry for sample code Y'.

It's worth noting that I work predominantly on desktop software, so I'm used to a longer release cycle than a lot of people here.