Ask HN: How to organize ideas when switching between brain-intensive projects?
However, everything changes when it comes to projects requiring substantial mental effort. It may be hard to begin but, when it gets momentum, it's hard to stop. I can work on a project for days, weeks, even months. But it gets really hard to concentrate on other tasks. And especially hard to work on another project of the same magnitude.
I realized that for the first time when I took the huge mistakenly decision of starting a company during my masters. I could do a decent volume of work during those years, but my inability of working on them in parallel brought many sorts of problems to my life.
Sometimes I think I simply shouldn't undertake more than one big project a time -- and I don't feel devastated about that. However, I still think that it would be good to have such an ability and, so, I'd like to know from you guys if you have some strategy.
Things I've attempted:
- handwriting my thoughts: Sometimes I feel that I can't unload my working memory, maybe due to an unconscious fear of losing all the ideas. It seems that writing the ideas down helps me to "convince" my brain that it's safe to let all that information go.
- doing a bit of over-planning, breaking down a bigger project on smaller, yet sub-optimal tasks: that is probably not the most efficient way to conduct a project, but, by transforming it on a stream of easier tasks, they require less mental resources. Besides, it prevents me to become too "passionate" about the project -- again, sacrificing efficiency for other important things of life.
Do you also face such problem? Do you have something interesting to share on this regard?