Juggling many projects?

One thing is for sure. Getting into the internet marketing field also means getting excited about all the possibilities and opportunities that come along the way. Most of the time, we tend to take on too many projects simultaneously. This is almost fine, as long as the projects are short-term ones. The main problems arise when our projects are long-term and involve teams with many people.

For quite some time, I used to think that the way to go was many in-house projects with many other people. My aim was to get involved with several teams and help each one with its project management, promotion, monetization and branding. I thought that since my tasks were limited to team management and promotion, and since my involvement actively starts near the end of each project right before its release, it’s the best to take on as many as possible and hope one of them meets success. I thought I had all bases covered.

But I was wrong!

What I found out the hard way was that, when you undertake a project (and especially an in-house project), you have to completely devote yourself to it, even if your instincts tell you otherwise. Trying to juggle too many projects at once can only go wrong.

The key to success lays in project selection, not project quantity.

Getting involved in a team project requires that you give it your full attention. Why? I can think of many reasons:

First off, it’s the decent thing to do! It helps group morale, knowing that all members are devoted to the same project and that you all work towards the same common goal.

Secondly, if you give a project your full attention, chances are your focus will be better, thus your performance and ability to come up with better ideas for implementation.

This way you also give each project less failure points and, upon completion, you’ll have no questions, doubts or last minute changes teasing your mind. Worrying about multiple problems from multiple projects all at the same time hardly makes good practice for success.

Lastly, you can be sure you did everything you could to make the project successful and, perhaps most importantly, move on to the next one with confidence.

What the image above explains is how time between projects should be divided and distributed. Undertake a project, focus on it, complete it and when the project reaches its maintenance stage, then move on to the next one.

Ps. Deciding what projects you will devote yourself to is close to an art-form. It’s very important and needs a lot of thought and attention. Read my post on the project selection process to get a better understanding of this concept.

Ps2. What can also work well is to have one team project that you focus your main efforts on, and one long term personal project (like a blog) that you can work on in your free time. This way you won’t be putting all your eggs in one basket and you’ll be building yourself some brand equity at the same time. If in the end the main project doesn’t turn out so well, at least your personal blog will have evolved by doing something you love.

I would really like to hear your thoughts on this one! What do you do? Are you involved in many projects at the same time, or do you focus only on one and why?