Too Many Projects? The 10-to-15 Rule Will Save You!

In this video, we're digging into the peak of my PARA organizing framework, creating a dedicated place for each of your projects. This starts with making a simple list of every active project you are currently committed to. Now, making a list might not seem monumentous, but the reality is that deciding what projects you're working on and clearly defining them is the key to gaining focus, clarity and momentum in your digital note taking and your creative work. First, to recap what are projects? Projects are outcomes that you are working toward that require a dedicated effort within a certain timeframe. Projects must have two things. First, a clear goal that you want to achieve, and second, a deadline or even just a rough timeline you want to complete the project by. Third, finishing an essay or a piece of writing by next Thursday is a project. Going on vacation to a certain country by the end of this year is a project. Redesigning your website this quarter or reading a book in the next two months are all projects. Every project has a specific outcome and a timeline to achieve it, even if that timeline isn't completely precise. With that in mind, here's how to craft your project list. Step one Brainstorm your list. Let's create our project list together, which I'm going to do on paper for illustrative purposes. For your first project list, you want to start by writing down everything you're working on right now. Whether or not you're sure it's a project yet will winnow things down. In the next step. I'm going to start with just what immediately comes to the top of my mind without censoring myself or trying to evaluate up front whether it's a good project or not. What immediately comes to mind is the launch of my book. Something else that comes to mind that that reminds me of is we're designing a custom notebook. I know we also need to plan our summer retreat. Which reminds me I need to look at our performance review system. I have some notes on that that I'll look at next week. We have Cohort 14 of our course, which reminds me also that we need to start thinking about a new product that we're gonna be launching, which is a learning community. Notice that as these sort of come to the surface of my mind, each one triggers an idea for a different one. As I look over these, the book launch reminds me that we also trip coming up to London and then New York City. Okay, I have a few items to start. These are just the immediate things that were top of mind. Next, I'm going to check my email from the past few days to see if that sparks any other ideas for current projects. Looking at my email from just the past few days, I'm reminded of several ongoing threads that actually represent projects. So for example, I'm going to add writing an article on remote work which I've been corresponding with with with a collaborator. And also I have a thread going with my lawyer about our estate planning which is not exactly very exciting, but I'm going to put here to complete estate planning paperwork. And finally one more ongoing thread which is with my coach Mina, which is to do my coaching homework. Now I'm going to go to my calendar app and my to do list app and what I'm looking for is anything that reminds me or that reveals itself as part of a bigger project. Even if I'm not totally sure I'm going to write them down. For now, looking at my calendar, I have both some meetings from the recent past and upcoming meetings that remind me of a few projects that are ongoing. For example, I was just talking to my brother who's a contractor about home studios and that reminds me that I want to write an article with what we've learned from designing and building the studio that we're in right now. So I'll say write home studio article. Looking here on my calendar we visited a local kiteboarding school recently. We're actually in one of the world capitals of kiteboarding, which is Long Beach, California. So that reminds me, I have a project that I want to take on which is to learn how to kiteboard. So let's put learn kiteboarding. Thinking about kiteboarding reminds me of something else that I'd like to spend some time on which is practicing piano. Looking at my calendar also reminds me of my fitness routine where which I have as a recurring calendar item. So I'm going to put here on my list fitness routine. And finally I'm going to look at my to do list. Often our to do list has a lot of small tasks, but sometimes what seems like a small task can actually be part of a much bigger project. Let's take a look and see if there's any hidden invisible projects that I've missed. Looking at my to do list, I'm reminded that I have to do my 2021 taxes. So let's write that down. I also have an item here to talk to a contractor about doing an addition to our home. So I'm going to add home addition to the list. I also see it to do to read a best selling sci fi book. So I'm going to add Sci Fi reading. And finally Something that comes to mind is spending more time with my son. You can see here in just a few minutes, we've already generated a big list of potential active projects based on all the items in my mind, my calendar, my email, and my example existing to do list step two follow the 10 to 15 rule. You want to end up with no more than about 15 projects on your list and no fewer than about 10. If you have more than 15 projects, you're unlikely to make significant visible progress on them in any given week. The risk there is that if you don't make visible progress, you'll stop believing you can and you'll abandon your projects. The point of a project list is focus. It's the ability to decide on your priorities, move them forward, and see progress. It's making the invisible effort you put in every day visible. On the opposite side of the spectrum, having fewer than about 10 projects in play holds a different risk. No matter how motivated you are to complete any particular project, you will eventually find yourself stuck or stalled out on any given one at any given time. Whether it's a creative block fatigue or something entirely out of your control, sometimes a project is simply unable to move forward. And since there's no way for for anyone to avoid that entirely, you always want another project that you can seamlessly switch to whenever you get stalled out. This keeps your project list living and breathing. You're never stuck, but always in motion, so try to keep the number at around 10 minimum. As you can see, I have too many projects on my list. I have 18 that I thought of. For most people watching this, I'm guessing you're in a similar situation. Thankfully, I have a few ways to narrow things down before simply striking projects off my list. Step 3 Identify false projects. First of all, we have some items here that aren't really projects. The most common items that sneak onto a project list are dreams, hobbies, and areas. Dreams are like projects, but they don't have a specific deadline or timeline you'd like them to happen by. Hobbies are projects without any particular outcome or goal in mind, and areas are a general term to describe ongoing areas of responsibility that don't really end, but that you need to support and develop over time, but that you never really complete. Things like your health, your family, your finances, or your career. Let's take a look and try to identify these and remove them from our list. So first, let's start with dreams. If I'm very honest with myself, what strikes me as dreams are the Home edition we just did a major Remodel of our garage. I do not want to do any major remodels for the foreseeable future. The other one that strikes me as actually not very realistic right now is learning kiteboarding. It's not the summer anyway, which is when I would really be doing that. So I'm going to strike that from the list as a dream. Next, I'm going to look for hobbies. What jumps out at me is practicing piano. That doesn't mean it's not important, but I don't really need to manage it ongoingly as a practice project. It's really just a weekly habit that I can spend time on whenever I have some free time. The other one that seems like a hobby is sci fi reading. It doesn't have any particular deadline. There's no timeframe by which I need to do this reading. It's really just something I do in the evening to relax. And finally, let's look at areas. What are areas of responsibility that do need some ongoing attention but don't have this kind of specific moment in time that I'm trying to get them done by? Obvious ones are fitness routine, which again is something that I can just put on my calendar. Certain days, certain time. I don't need to really manage a lot of information related to it. And the other one is time with my son. That is actually probably the most important item on this list. But I don't want to think of time with my son as a project, something I'm trying to achieve, something I'm trying to overcome. It's again really just a block of time that I want to set aside each day when I finish work and doesn't really belong on my project list. Now we have some items here that are actually too big to be a proper project. They're actually a container for other sub projects or they don't have a clear enough way to complete them in the short term. One example of this is the Building a Second Brain book. You might think writing a book is a project. It has an outcome and it has a deadline, which is the release date. But no, it's way too big. Writing a book is actually a collection of many, many smaller projects which take place over years. For me, this endeavor started with finding an agent, which by itself took several months. That was a project within itself. Once that was complete, and only when that was complete did it make sense to start looking for an editor to work with me on the book proposal, which again was a project within itself. That took a few more months. Only after that was done Did I even start working on the book proposal? You can see that what I call mega projects, such as writing a book, can always be broken down into smaller sub projects, which has the benefit of making them feel much more feasible and and tells you what action to take next. The completion of each small sub project kicks off the next one. Since I know launching the book is too big of a project, I'm actually going to cross that out and replace it with increasing book pre orders. Can you see how that's a much more feasible, realistic shorter term project? It's going to happen within the next couple months and then have a clear completion. And then I can ask myself what's next? That makes it feel much more achievable than something as massive as writing an entire book. Now that we've called out false projects and projects that are too big and unwieldy, let's look at our list again to apply the 10 to 15 rule. You can see here that with all the changes I've made, I now have 12 very clearly defined short term projects which is within that 10 to 15 range that I'm looking for. If you still have more than 15 items, you need to move the least urgent to a few future projects note so it doesn't distract you in the meantime. If you have 15 projects because they've all been put on your plate by someone else, this is a chance for you to learn how to say no because you've over committed yourself or to renegotiate the scope of those commitments with someone else. At this stage we have an excellent project list. We're following the 10 to 15 rule. All of these projects are achievable in scope and we don't have any dreams, hobbies or open ended areas of responsibility on this list.