There’s a point where managing several projects starts getting a bit ridiculous. The website needs changes. Sales is asking for numbers. A client wants another round of revisions, and there’s a campaign that was supposed to go live two days ago. Meanwhile, the thing that actually needed two hours of concentration hasn’t been touched. And tomorrow, there’s probably going to be more of the same.
A lot of the problem comes down to switching between things all day. Every time someone needs an answer, the work changes. Then it takes a while to get back into whatever was happening before. It’s annoying, especially when the projects themselves aren’t particularly difficult. There are just too many things happening at once.
Stop Leaving Everything on a To-Do List
A list of 30 tasks doesn’t tell you much about how your day should look. Sure, the website launch is on there. So is the sales report, the campaign plan, and that proposal someone asked for last week. But which one gets your attention first? And when? This is where time blocking comes in.
Put the sales report on Monday morning. Keep Tuesday afternoon for campaign planning. Give the website a proper slot on Wednesday, assuming that’s when the developer will have the latest version ready. It sounds basic because it is. The trick is not to book every single minute. Something will come up. A client will call, an approval will get delayed, or a meeting will run over. If the entire day is already booked, one small change can mess up everything else. Leave some room. Google Calendar is fine for this. Give each project its own colour and block out the work that actually needs concentration. And when someone sends a meeting invite during that time, don’t automatically accept it.
Everything Can’t Be Urgent
Anyone managing several projects has probably dealt with this. Three people send messages within ten minutes, and all three seem to need something immediately. One wants a report. Another needs feedback on a campaign. The third is waiting for approval before a project can move forward. The Eisenhower Matrix is useful here. It separates work into four groups: do now, schedule, delegate, or drop. For example, if a campaign is scheduled to launch tomorrow and the budget hasn’t been approved, that’s worth dealing with first. A report due next Friday can probably wait until the afternoon. And if the report just needs formatting, there’s a fair chance someone else can handle it.
Entrepreneurs often end up checking everything themselves, even when the task doesn’t really need their involvement. Eventually, everyone starts waiting for the same person to approve things. Atlassian has a useful guide to the Eisenhower Matrix if a more structured way of sorting tasks would help.
Some Weeks Need a Different Schedule
The calendar that works perfectly one week might be completely useless the next. A launch is coming up. Someone’s on leave. Working hours change because of personal commitments. For Muslims, especially during Ramadan, people may need to shift their working hours around fasting, prayers, and family commitments. Plan meetings around those changes, leave mornings free for work that needs focus, and let clients know early if approvals or deadlines might be affected. The same approach works during busy launch periods or whenever the usual routine changes. The schedule doesn’t have to stay fixed just because it was agreed upon two weeks ago.
Why Are There Twelve Tasks in Progress?
This is worth checking in any project management tool. Open the board. Look at everything marked In Progress. How much of it is actually being worked on? Sometimes a task has been sitting there since Monday because somebody hasn’t approved it. Another is waiting for revised copy. A third needs information from a different team. Technically, all three projects are moving. In reality, they’re stuck.
A Kanban board makes this easier to spot. Use four columns: To Do, In Progress, Review, and Done. Trello works perfectly well for a basic setup. Then look at the blocked tasks instead of starting new ones. If the developer is waiting for final content, get the content sorted. If the campaign is waiting for approval, follow up with the person responsible. Adding another task to the board won’t make either problem disappear.
It can also help to limit how many tasks someone works on at once. Two or three active tasks might be manageable, depending on their complexity. Seven tasks spread across different projects? That’s a lot of switching, particularly when each one involves different people.
Break the Work Down a Bit More
“Finish the website” isn’t much of a task. It’s several tasks bundled together, with no clear indication of what needs to happen next. Review the homepage copy. Test the contact form. Check the redirects. Send the revised landing page for approval. Now there’s something to work with. This also makes it easier to see why a project is taking longer than expected. If the copy is finished but the page is still waiting for approval, the delay isn’t necessarily a development issue.
For smaller jobs, the Pomodoro Technique can be useful. Work for 25 minutes, take a five-minute break, then carry on if needed. It works well enough for editing content, checking campaign links, or getting through a pile of research. For something like a financial review, a longer block makes more sense. There’s no reason to force every task into the same routine.
Before Taking on More Work, Check What’s Already There
It’s tempting to say yes to another project, particularly when it’s an interesting one. But take a look at the current workload first. A quick review on Friday can help. Check what’s finished, what’s waiting for someone else’s input, and which deadlines are coming up over the next two weeks. If a deliverable has been sitting in review for four days, chase it. If two major deadlines fall on the same Thursday, work out how to handle that now rather than on Thursday morning.
The tracker should show who’s responsible, when the task is due, where it stands, and what happens next. Otherwise, people end up asking for updates in Slack and email all day. And sometimes the problem isn’t organisation at all. There genuinely aren’t enough people available to handle the work. No productivity technique is going to fix that for long.
Keep It Simple
There’s no need to spend days building a complicated productivity system. Start with a shared task tracker and a calendar that reflects the actual workload. Check both regularly. If tasks keep getting stuck at the approval stage, fix that. If meetings are eating up the time needed for focused work, move them. That’s enough to start with.
The point isn’t to make every day look organised. It’s to know what’s happening across the projects, spot delays before they become bigger problems, and stop wasting time figuring out what everyone should already know. Some days will still be messy. The difference is that the work doesn’t have to get lost in the mess.