It surprises some people to discover that I always have multiple ongoing projects. This is nothing new, I’ve been this way nearly my entire life. While sometimes I wish I could give complete dedication to only one endeavor at a time, I see benefit from my methods.

benefits of multiple ongoing projects

First and foremost, there’s nearly always a project to match my mood, my available brain power, and my environment.

It’s beneficial to have projects in various stages of completion. There’s always something that has the excitement of beginning, the comfort zone of repetition, and where I can taste completion.

Variety can foster creativity (as can constraint). Sometimes I find several projects feature the same stitch or technique as a theme, and that in itself is worth exploring.

Looking deeper into the first reason, having multiple ongoing projects means there’s likely a project available to match my mood, brain power, and environment is important for me. I often feel that I need to always feel productive. When there’s discord between me and my project it’s not a good situation. I create because I enjoy it. Maybe not 100% of the time, but overall I want to be pleased with my work.

Some days that might be a highly complex technique or construction, at other days it may just be simple stitches.

multiple ongoing projects, a view of my day

It is rare for me to work on more than three projects throughout the day. I’m not flitting from project to project.

There’s a simple project as I start my day, I call this my commute project. It’s true, I haven’t commuted since 2012, unless you count walking downstairs to my studio. These days at 8a, I am most often found spending a half hour enjoying coffee and conversation while working on a project with friends from minyan.

I schedule work projects throughout the day, these are often a swatch or a sample and I interlace these with other work obligations. There is an attempt to balance attention residue with deep work. I tend to work on these projects for about 45 minutes to an hour and a half depending on a myriad of factors.

At night I’m curled up with a project that helps my brain relax and wind down, for the past year or so this is most often a blanket.

I nearly always have a sock knitting project in my bag and either it or the morning project often also finds itself at lectures. This is a nod to working with my environment — I don’t want to have to chase multiple balls of yarn or a complex technique when I’m out and about.

multiple ongoing projects, week view

This week I am working most actively on about seven projects, not everything is worked every day. There are socks, a hat, a blanket, a sweater, a shawl, and two designs. These are shown in the accompanying photograph.

The hat is part of morning coffee, the sock and kippah live in my every day bag. The blanket is night time knitting in front of the TV. I’ll probably bring the sweater to knitting group again this week.

What about projects that are in an semi-active state or others that I haven’t worked on for a month or more? Some I set aside for seasonality reasons, while others because I need to undo a large section, and a few because I needed a change. I review open projects regularly as I plan my week.

how i manage multiple ongoing projects

The key to all of this is of course notes and writing things down.

I’m not perfect; I’ve shoved projects into bags with no needles and no notes, not even a scribble of a hint.

I do however, have confidence that at one point in time I scribbled something on a piece of paper. I’m always writing in my notebooks. In an effort to create better organization of my snippets of information, I’m creating a project card catalog. On each index card I list the project and when I write the date I work on it. This helps me find the appropriate notebook. I go through notebooks at a rate of more than one per year and some projects have spanned years.

This finding guide helps me to successfully complete even the most neglected of projects, or at least make a well-informed decision before I rip it out.

It’s possible to work multiple ongoing projects without becoming overwhelmed. I hope that this post has provided you with some ideas for how to manage them.

additional reading

Here are a few other posts I’ve written relating to notes and notebooks notes and notebooks and deep work.

• keeping track of WIPs (Jan 2024)
• Making with Notes (Jul 2023)
• Using Mailing Labels to Help Organize Your Notebooks (Mar 2021)
• 3 Tips to Organize Your Notebook (PSG Studio, Apr 2021)
• How I work: cleaning attention residue (PSG Studio, April 2016)
• Book Review: Deep Work (PSG Studio, Mar 2016)

You can find a selection of notebooks are in the shop, if they are sold out, I also offer notebooks at PSG Studio. I also offer tote bags featuring my sketches through a print on demand service.

Looking for something specific? I may be able to special order for you. I’m working on balancing what I offer.

If I know you IRL and you would like local pickup, please contact me before placing your order.