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Q&A How can I deal with an overload of writing projects?

I found it very helpful to use an idea collection, which allows you to prioritize your projects without having the feeling that you miss some of them. It takes one great burden of your shoulders th...

posted 12y ago by Daniel Wessel‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

Answer
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T02:24:07Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5781
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar Daniel Wessel‭ · 2019-12-08T02:24:07Z (over 4 years ago)
I found it very helpful to **use an idea collection** , which allows you to prioritize your projects without having the feeling that you miss some of them. It takes one great burden of your shoulders that often prevents that any project is realized: **The need to do everything at once — because nothing can go lost when you collect it!** It becomes not a question of _whether_ you do it or not, but _when_. And _when_ mostly means when you have _enough ideas to realize it_ and _the necessary time/resources_.

There are [many ways to collect ideas, I'd refer to my blog/freely (donationware) available book here](http://www.organizingcreativity.com/book-as-pdf/). When it comes to working on the ideas, I have **one core project** that I focus on and that is frequently on my mind, then I have **central projects (5-7)** which are also often in the back of my mind and for which I am generating ideas at a higher rate (as you need more than just one idea for a creative project). But it is only collecting the ideas, jotting them down like "do x or y", a line of dialogue, and the like, not actually fleshing it out or realizing it. And then there are **periphery projects (a lot)** which are any other ideas I have -- they are also collected.

This allows you to **focus on the core project (thereby realize it)**, while 5-7 other projects have a lot of material build up in the background, meaning **you can quickly start another project when the core project is finished** (important for me, because I usually fall into a hole when a project is finished, unless I have something else to do where there is already a lot of material to work with).

So working on one core project while building up central projects works very well for me, I can highly recommend it.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2012-05-30T09:01:57Z (almost 12 years ago)
Original score: 4