so I don’t know how much my advice is worth, but…

As I’ve gone along, I found that I just can’t keep as many projects in the air as when I was younger. The context-switching seems to cost more and I also seem to take more down time than before.

Now, that might not apply to you, but it brings up a question that will: Being honest with yourself, how many projects can you keep forward progress on at one time?

My first step once I’d answered that question was to identify which ones seemed really important to me at this time and “park” some of the others. I won’t claim to have got it down to the ideal number and the “parked ideas” list is always growing, but, I think a key element of just about every realistic “organisation scheme” is what I tend to call “triage.”

That is, there are hard choices to be made, CDE (can’t do everything) right now, so some things have to wait.

Creatively, that’s really hard, we have the ability to work in many media and the internet is always reminding us how much various media interact. But if you’re at the point where you’re asking the question of “what to quit” then for me there’s 3 sorts of filtering questions:

Am I doing this project for love or money? If it’s money, is it going to pay off with a defined effort? If it’s undefined, just how likely is it? Is that defined effort worth it for the money? Will this project be worth a lot less if I do it next year?

That can help you find some projects to park on the money side.

On the love side, I think you have to consider your artistic identity a little. Excellence requires some focus. If you currently have 4 kinds of projects going: Writing, singing, film making, photoshop (or still image skills) then it’s worth asking yourself, which of these things group together and which group do I tend to introduce myself at parties at?

From your short bio on the site, the feeling is that writing and singing have a big part to play for you, and they go together well, being grouped around words… Maybe it’s time to ask if you can “park” film-making or photoshop for a while?

After all, in the end, does “I write screenplays and my own songs, but I know photoshop too” really get you going more than “I write screenplays and my own songs.”

I’m also in the creative industry, so I understand perfectly. It is in my personal life where all these creativity-enhancing extras overflow the worst, as opposed to my work life which is practically a model of organizational structure and efficiency. There are just too many things I want to pursue, some of which could be really important someday.

So how to know? I think you can never really know what is important and worth the extra investment. Life, opportunities, trends are just too random. But this basic formula makes sense to me: How much (insofar as can be objectively ascertained, or else guesstimated) does this help me with my current projects and what I expect to be doing within the next 6-12 months? That question helps you answer the next one: Is it keeping me from doing other things that would have more value in the next 6-12 months? If the answer is yes, can it. If the answer is no, then feel free to pursue it as long as it’s not stressing you out or ruining your life. I think keeping in a happy flow has more to do with long term success than magical breakthroughs.

Of course there are also the hobbies and pursuits that do not bear fruit until after longer periods of time … maybe 5, 10, 15 years. If you are chasing any of those, you need to decide how much they are worth. It might be worth it. But don’t even think about taking on so many of those kinds of projects that finding fulfillment in all of them (and therefore any of them) will be impossible.

Seth has written a short little book all about this subject: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/the_dip/

It doesn’t sound to me as if your problem is knowing when to quit. It may be that your problem is knowing how to commit.

it seems to me the time to quit is when you no longer enjoy what your doing or it’s costing you too much in terms of your family and personal relationships/health.

if you love what you do and find it rewarding there’s no reason to quit.

Maybe not the best advice, but— Life as we know it now requires all hands [sic] ready to catch anything falling your way. Time was a job lasted. Careers seemed linear and possibly lucrative over the decades. Now, well, tomorrow if I’m lucky I could be on a picket line.

I tend to view the work and interests as tag clouds: Where does my energy want to go, but also how much money do I need now? Learning Photoshop tricks means nothing if I don’t need it Tuesday. Does the script focus me? Or do I want to write about the loose crocodiles in Vietnam? Or loose aliens on Broadway?

The actual workflow? It’s nothing but a river: A lot of detritus gets left on the bank. I might come back for it; I might not. But I didn’t “bank” it myself.

It’s a zen thing—

Worry less about what to leave behind, and just, forgive the expression, do it — by which I mean launch yourself into the next gd-awful thing you can’t get out of your soul.

You can’t do everything in life. Prioritize the fun things and the important things you really want to get done. Work your way down. If you focus on one too much you may get really sucked into it and not have time for others, but you may excel in it. And remember not to turn the fun things into a labor.

This is where Covey is quite good… Yes, the Seven Habits guy, I tend to think of him as the antithesis of the David.

He focuses on your identity as a set of roles in the world. That helps establish who you might think you are. When a set of projects is nagging/attracting/distracting you it’s helpful to know the part of you that they belong to as it were.

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield is very useful on cutting through the crap and as he calls it ‘turning pro’ about your work and whatever creative practice you are engaged in. I cant say I’d endorse the whole book but the initial two thirds or so are terrific.

I find having a healthy and uncritical someday/maybe list helps. For me it’s sometimes a borderline “probably never” list, but at least once a project is listed there it’s not constantly on my mind. It also gets me past the initial high of having come up with an idea and lets me examine it in the harsh light of day a week later.

On a deeper level, I’m slowly growing out of my tendency to pursue things that I’d like to like, but don’t necessarily actually like. Paul Graham talks about this a bit in his How to do what you love essay. Basically if I find myself halfway through something wondering how long it’ll be till it’s over, it’s a good sign that maybe it’s something I shouldn’t be doing.

Finally an oddball outlet I have is halfbakery.com. I have a lot of what seem like semi-decent ideas that I’ll never realistically have the time and/or resources to pursue. If I post them there, I can at least claim bragging rights when someone else gets rich off the idea.

I’m in the same boat, and agree with the previous comments. I have been making great strides toward finishing projects when I started prioritizing my projects and parking all but the top 2-3. I haven’t quit anything, just parked them. I have folders to collect ideas that pop up, and review all of my parked projects as part of weekly review to make sure they stay “fresh”.

Part of my prioritization was to consider how much effort would be required to reach something resembling “finished”, or at least “released” (I’m in software, myself). So stuff that I can finish sooner gets a +1 over something that needs more time.

It seems to me like you really want to make films. All of the things you are interested in are elements of filmmaking. Reign it all in. If you want to write a short story, then write one that you can write into a screenplay and shoot yourself. Learn Photoshop to make your film’s poster and graphics. Have your band write and record the original music for the film.

Unite all of your interests into one common goal. The completed film.

My favorite football team got slaughtered this past weekend. The coach asked the players after the game, “How many of you play video games” Hands went up all over the lockerooom. Then the coach said, “How many of you quit and reset the game if you are losing” Hands remained in the air, and the coach responded, “Thats what losers do, they quit when they are losing”

You dont have to write an award winning short story, you just have to write one you can turn into a screenplay. You never quit, the next task depends on the current task to be completed, thats all. The screenplay doesnt have to wow agents and studios it just has to be something you can shoot. Comeplete the screenplay, move on to the next step. Shooting the movie and then the fun stuff Photoshop and music.

You never quit. You show your film to friends or you put it up on Youtube and start thinking about your next story. And how to write it out as a short story. Then you turn it into a screenplay…

Thats what us filmmakers do - EVERYTHING!

Oranse Taylor http://www.youtube.com/oranse

I generally agree with the prioritize and park sentiments presented. The question is now how to prioritize.

If you were like me I would start by going with the easiest to finish or the one with the most certain payoff/prospect.

However, I think if you get stalled it’s best to regroup, look at your life as a whole and think about where you want to go in the next few years, and then use that as the major deciding point.

From experience with myself and with others - If you dread going in to work three days in a row you are done. I know people who are physically ill when they get ready to go to work. I try to tell these people as nicely as possible that it is time for a change.

Let me say that The War of Art is pretty good. I’m not quite halfway through it yet, but it points out some really good things about Resistance and Procrastination.

I suppose you could start with a project you’d really like to do, but is a smaller scale project that you feel a little more comfortable about tackling. It’s like Anne Lamott’s idea of “small assignments,” where she tells herself she only has to fill a square inch with text at a time.

Try trimming down your list to about 5 things you want to tackle in the next 12 months, and/or 2-3 things you want to tackle in the next 6 months? Breaking it down like that might help.

Y’all have given me some excellent thinkfood here.

Reading the Graham essay now, and considering flipping through the War of Art (in one of my copious free moments, I’m afraid).

Thanks, and keep the ideas coming!

Kramer: Look at this, they are redoing the Cloud Club. Jerry: Oh, that restaurant on top of the Chrysler building? Yeah, that’s a good idea. Kramer: Of course it’s a good idea, it’s my idea. I conceived this whole project two years ago. Jerry: Which part? The renovating the restaurant you don’t own part or spending the two hundred million you don’t have part? Kramer: You see I come up with these things, I know they’re gold, but nothing happens. You know why? Jerry: No resources, no skill, no talent, no ability, no brains. Kramer: (interrupts) No, no…time! It’s all this meaningless time. Laundry, grocery, shopping, coming in here talking to you. Do you have any idea how much time I waste in this apartment? Jerry: I can ball park it.

Really, if you think about it, when you ask yourself that question on any project, the answer is to quit. If you’ve lost the passion and drive, then you are forcing it. If you are driven, focused, passionate and committed to a thing, the question never arises. In short, you have answered your own question

I am a musician/songwriter and I just went through knowing when to quit. I revisited a song the other day which i had all the tracks done except the vocals. I hadn’t done anything with this song for over a year so I thought I’ld revisit it and give it a good go.

After an hour I just said “this is going nowhere” and closed the song down and started working on another.

That’s it, I Quit!

I have the same problem - but what is worse is that I’m a perfectionist, which means usually I walk away from a project thinking, “well, I’ll come back to it and finish it (ie, do it the right way) later.” This has caused me nothing but grief. Lately, though, I’ve been using a trick I learned in a design class I took: make a prototype. When I have an idea for a song or a story, I get the thoughts down in a form where I can work with them — I’ll make a thumbnail sketch, write a few lines of description, capture a few key phrases of dialogue — and put them together into a folder labeled with the project. But the real insight here is realizing the project doesn’t have to be finished (ie perfect). All you need is a working model. Then, you can start developing the model — adding to it, editing it, reworking it — and if all goes well, you can develop it to a point where it really is good enough to send out. Then, if you need to move on to something else, you are now in a position where you can store away all the materials you have put together so that when you come back to it, you have something real to work with. A better advantage of this, though, is that when you’re working on developing a prototype for something else and think — hey, I can use that picture I drew for the other project — then its there for you to take and the two projects are now one. At least, thats the way it is supposed to work in theory — nothing is perfect.

Yes, everyone’s heard of Pareto, made popular by Tim Ferriss. Go to the source: Koch’s “The 80-20 principle”. It’s much deeper and far-reaching than most people realize.

In your case you’ll have to do a soul-searching analysis of everything on your plate. Ask questions like:

1 which do I absolutely love? 2 which am I fantastic at? 3 which do I hate? 4 which do I suck at?

And most important:

5 Which has the potential of outputs that RADICALLY MULTIPLY my inputs? Which could generate the most money/impact/growth with the least expenditures, assets and effort? Which small and/or simple projects could create big results.

First, toss out or outsource the 3s and 4s. Next, look at the 1s and 2s and evaluate with 5.

And think about this: Be unconventional and eccentric in your use of time.

Hope that helps.