Personal Development for Smart People Forums - View Single Post - How do I effectively manage myself when I have well over 50 projects to do?

simon · 12-05-2008, 10:50 AM

Dear All

It's been a while since I've last posted on StevePavlina's Forums but I've today hit upon a revelation and wanted to get some good honest advice. Essentially, life is going extremely well at the moment; I'm definitely in an upward spiral - all those years of struggle that I went through were purely a struggle to accumulate the correct information with which to achieve the goals and principles by which I live. Now I feel I have the correct information in my personal and business life; I'm inwardly happy

Anywho, today I decided that I needed to get myself PROPERLY ORGANISED. I've got lots of ideas that I want to start converting into reality and so I listed all the projects that immediately sprung to mind. I split them into the following categories:

'All Projects with Currently paying clients'
- These are day to day projects that I've committed to helping people out with

'All Potential Projects with Interested clients'
- These are projects were I have legwork and proposals to do for people who are looking to employ my services

'Internal Company Projects'
- i.e. accounting, tax returns, invoicing, networking and getting my email marketing stuff together

'Personal Projects'
'Fun, Social, Life & Personal Development Projects'
- diet, dating, writing, family, etc

Within fifteen minutes I'd listed about 48 projects and I know that this brief list does not represent every single goal I've ever had for myself, so i will be adding to this list.

When looking at this list, a feeling of calm came over me because it explained what I'd been feeling this week - mentally overwhelmed! I mean, in a weeks worth of time, if I attended to each project without sleep I could only attend to each one for three hours! So, once I realised it is totally unrealistic to have so many projects that I want to start going ahead with, I was pretty happy about having taken the time to assess this.

We're all pretty proactive on this blog, so lots of people must have the same situation as myself. If you need further clarification on anything, please ask.

How would anyone recommend that I go forward with this situation?

I have the following ideas about it so far:

1 - Bin some of these projects and resolve to not worry about doing any of them

2 - If not bin, put some of these on the backburner for review sometime next year

3 - Assess the ones that definately HAVE to be done, and the ones that I need to ACT on

4 - Form some sort of prioritisation on the projects

And then I'd also like to know how people fit so many tasks into just one small day - I don't find that I can work 16 hours day consistently because I'll eventually just burn out. You watch some of the super successful entrepreneurs and they all work around the clock. What are people's thoughts on this>

12-05-2008, 10:50 AM	#1 (permalink)
simon Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Posts: 67	How do I effectively manage myself when I have well over 50 projects to do? Dear All It's been a while since I've last posted on StevePavlina's Forums but I've today hit upon a revelation and wanted to get some good honest advice. Essentially, life is going extremely well at the moment; I'm definitely in an upward spiral - all those years of struggle that I went through were purely a struggle to accumulate the correct information with which to achieve the goals and principles by which I live. Now I feel I have the correct information in my personal and business life; I'm inwardly happy Anywho, today I decided that I needed to get myself PROPERLY ORGANISED. I've got lots of ideas that I want to start converting into reality and so I listed all the projects that immediately sprung to mind. I split them into the following categories: 'All Projects with Currently paying clients' - These are day to day projects that I've committed to helping people out with 'All Potential Projects with Interested clients' - These are projects were I have legwork and proposals to do for people who are looking to employ my services 'Internal Company Projects' - i.e. accounting, tax returns, invoicing, networking and getting my email marketing stuff together 'Personal Projects' 'Fun, Social, Life & Personal Development Projects' - diet, dating, writing, family, etc Within fifteen minutes I'd listed about 48 projects and I know that this brief list does not represent every single goal I've ever had for myself, so i will be adding to this list. When looking at this list, a feeling of calm came over me because it explained what I'd been feeling this week - mentally overwhelmed! I mean, in a weeks worth of time, if I attended to each project without sleep I could only attend to each one for three hours! So, once I realised it is totally unrealistic to have so many projects that I want to start going ahead with, I was pretty happy about having taken the time to assess this. We're all pretty proactive on this blog, so lots of people must have the same situation as myself. If you need further clarification on anything, please ask. How would anyone recommend that I go forward with this situation? I have the following ideas about it so far: 1 - Bin some of these projects and resolve to not worry about doing any of them 2 - If not bin, put some of these on the backburner for review sometime next year 3 - Assess the ones that definately HAVE to be done, and the ones that I need to ACT on 4 - Form some sort of prioritisation on the projects And then I'd also like to know how people fit so many tasks into just one small day - I don't find that I can work 16 hours day consistently because I'll eventually just burn out. You watch some of the super successful entrepreneurs and they all work around the clock. What are people's thoughts on this>