Should you work on more than one project/company at a time?

Is it good to wear numerous hats at once?

These are the thoughts bouncing around my head right now as I evaluate what comes next for me.  Many of you know I have a number of things going on right now – from Seconds (mobile payments) to Callin’it (the sports prediction app) to Founders RAW to my writing and to other startup ideas I have.  This doesn’t even include the work I do on a weekly basis to keep a consistent income and pay the bills.

It’s good then that I finally figured out a time structure that works for me.  Basically, just get the #^$% done is how I operate.  It doesn’t matter if it takes 30 mins or 10 hours, I just need to get the deliverables – delivered.

And it’s working.

The point of this post – and the questions I opened with – is  I think doing more than just “one thing” at a time works.  For some of us.  I recently noticed myself bouncing from one thing to another after short bursts of energy given to a particular project/company.

It seems to work for me and my personality.

Similar to a workout, I give high intensity attention the particular activity for a short time and then move on to the next thing during the day that needs attention.  During a typical day I might work on 2 or 3 different companies/projects/products but in the aggregate it seems to work.

It’s refreshing to move onto a totally different company and project right after completing a task with the first one.  For me, it means progress since I am starting to see the exponential impact these projects are having on my life.

And it’s a hell of a step in the right direction after the challenging year I had last year, where I felt stuck in the mud.

This might not be sustainable long term, as in trying to run the next big company I decide to start.  Once you have  structure, employees, and a more natural cadence to the daily efforts of the company some of my side projects might need to cool down for a while.

Then again, Virgin Group founder and billionaire Richard Branson pretty much lives the exact lifestyle I am describing above.  So I think the lesson is in finding the right cadence and level of appropriate ADD that allows you to maximize effectiveness in as many things as possible.

If that’s just one thing – great.   If it’s many, you are probably one of the few.