Juggling multiple projects

Sometimes I'm wondering about myself how I'm handling all my different projects. Writing articles and book reviews for computer magazines, writing articles in my wiki (in German) and this blog, developing different software projects in Smalltalk, learning Scheme and realizing a first project with it, maintaining my server, and reading a lot. And all that beside my family and my job. Colleagues and friends also asked me allready.

But now I'm reading "The Myths of Innovation" by Scott Berkun. It's the second of his books I'm reading and even if I'm just at the beginning I can say that it is a very good book. And one part handles the importance of idling during the process of being creative. This pause is needed to allow the subconscious mind to think about the topic and to build the right idea out of the stuff developed before. This pause can be - and typically should be - really lazy. But sometimes switching the concentration to a different topic is also a kind of idling, related to the original topic.

And that's right, I often have the feeling that the work on a new project or with a new technology makes my mind free for the longer running projects. And afterwards I'm more productive. So everything is fine, I can go on, and I don't have to care. *smile*