[Poll] How many projects do you have at a given time?

How many projects do you have right now? (Across all areas of your life)

  • 1-10

    Votes: 1 3.4%
  • 11-15

    Votes: 5 17.2%
  • 16-20

    Votes: 3 10.3%
  • 21-25

    Votes: 2 6.9%
  • 26-30

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 31-35

    Votes: 6 20.7%
  • 35-40

    Votes: 1 3.4%
  • 40-50

    Votes: 2 6.9%
  • 51-70

    Votes: 1 3.4%
  • 71+

    Votes: 8 27.6%

  • Total voters
    29
  • Poll closed .

nickmay

Learning and practicing, and then practicing more
Projects defined using the classic definition: anything outstanding (that requires more than one step) that you're committed to completing within a year. Also include 'subprojects' if you keep them on your projects list.

Bonus points: how many someday/maybe items in your system? How often do you actually review that list?

Extra credit: tool that you use? And do you keep everything in one system, or do you bifurcate between work and home? (Or other areas of your life.)

But those are bonus questions, what I'm really curious about is how many projects everyone is juggling/managing/tracking at a given time. I've seen a lot of numbers thrown around (some people have 10, others 30, others 80, etc.) so the bigger sample size on this the better!

I'm always curious how my current number of projects (54) stacks up against others -- particularly since the higher my project number the less in control I feel; for me, high project numbers are a strong indication that I'm behind on my weekly review and my life has shifted in some way and I need to review and regroup... in my copious spare time haha. (We're all busy..)

I'm also a software developer working on a fast little command-line GTD system that helps encourage the user in the right direction, and I'd love to be able to provide the user some feedback based on their number of projects -- ideally based on actual data, not just my guesstimates.

Thanks for voting and/or commenting; really curious to see what everyone says! (I searched the forum and couldn't find a poll like this so far, if it exists, I'd love to see previous data as well as how the community is currently doing)
 

nickmay

Learning and practicing, and then practicing more
lisp_cycles.png

Obligatory... and LISP is awesome. I've tried to use it many times before ending up in Ruby because it gives you 90% of it and has a lot better support for things I actually want to do. That said, I spend a fair amount of time hacking code in elisp to make Emacs bend to my will.
 

Oogiem

Registered
as of a few minutes ago:
INBOX:
- Inbox items: 5


FOLDERS:
- Active: 10

PROJECTS:
- Active: 168
- Done: 29
- Dropped: 5
- OnHold: 29

TAGS:
- Active: 45


TASKS:
- Available: 86
- Blocked: 1194
- Completed: 366
- Dropped: 16
- Next: 64
- Overdue: 120

Explanation on the overdue.I did a lot of stuff but haven't checked them off yet. I've been swamped over the last 4 days and a lot of stuff that had to be done by the end of the month got done but I enver checked it off or I didn't finish the documentation of the task yet so it's still technically overdue
 
Using Omnifocus and @Oogiem above format:

INBOX: 2
FOLDERS: 4 (3 for Main AOF and 1 for Reference)
PROJECTS: Active: 34 On Hold: 4
TAGS: Active: 37
TASKS: Active and Deferred: 61

I had to look up bifurcate LOL. Both my personal and work life is together in one system in Omnifocus

Peter
 

Xavier BOEMARE

Registered
Projects :
Active : 18
OnHold : 15

I try to limit active projects : cf WIP limit and Little's law

SomedayMaybe : 19 Projects, 80 Actions (but some might become projects if activated)
One for all, Omnifocus and Obsidian for Reference & Second brain
 

Oogiem

Registered
Why do you keep "Dropped" Projects on your list of active Projects. Do you move them somewhere else during the Weekly Review?
My list management tool, Omnifocus, has a handy statistics script that keeps all that I reported. I didn't want to take the tme to clean the report up so I just posted verbatim.

Dropped project wil age out of the report as soon as I save the dat to archive storage.

I chose quick and easy < 2 min action results vto respond s accurate clean it all up results that would have turned intoa project for me.
 

nickmay

Learning and practicing, and then practicing more
Thank you all for the awesome replies to date. And @Xavier BOEMARE I'd never thought about applying queuing theory, thank you that's fascinating. It's also great seeing where people are keeping their project support / reference material; I've struggled with that in the past. Thanks all!
 

cfoley

Registered
...
One for all, Omnifocus and Obsidian for Reference & Second brain

Thanks for this!

I have been using folders and files for most of my reference, preferring markdown files and VSCode for simple notes. I've never been quite happy with it but it looks like Obsidian can be a natural replacement for VSCode. Looks like the navigation features in Obsidian are the main thing I am missing in my current setup, and it shares my philosophy of preferring plain text files over proprietary formats.

One thing led to another and I ended up reading about the Zettelkasten method which I am going to give a try. Most non-actionable ideas that I have end up on my Someday/Maybe list, or my 'Journal About' list but from my initial research, the Zettelkasten method may be a more effective way of organising and relating these these ideas.
 

nickmay

Learning and practicing, and then practicing more
A month after I started this poll, and after a lot of hard work on my system, I'm finally able to answer my own question (at the moment) -- I'm at 11-15 projects right now across all areas of my life. Previously my average was 46 projects, when I was in a managerial position.
 
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