How do you avoid getting swamped with too many projects?

Guilty as charged myself... its actually very simple:

You can either tak 1 step in 10 directions
or
10 steps in 1 direction

:)

@doomhammer I call it the....

Entrepreneurial-Minded Developer Affliction

Sometimes multiple projects is actually a good thing if you're exploring or not sure which will be the best opportunity or most interesting to you. But at some point, I believe that if you want to be successful you have to just pick one project and focus.

With your time, you can get 1 thing 100% of the way there, or 3 things 33% of the way there, or 10 things 10% of the way there. The first is the only way to success.

When I get a new idea, I will write it down on my "someday/maybe" list. Sometimes I will spend an hour or two brainstorming it and writing down my insights so I don't forget them. But I always compare new ideas to the one thing I'm working on. So far finishing that one thing has always been clearly more important to me than starting something new.

If you like to read, "The ONE Thing" by Gary Keller is a good book. Or you can check out this summary: https://www.samuelthomasdavies.com/book-summaries/business/the-one-thing

I find having a clear goal helps.

Decide where you want to be in one, five, and ten years' time. Then ask yourself if the thing you are working on will get you there.

I also try to look at what I am not doing and ask why?

If I am moving from a project I once thought was necessary, then there must be a reason I've lost interest. What's this reason?

I exactly feel this ! When I work on a idea, other ideas come to my mind of new concepts.
I try to stay focus on building a product at a time, and when I have some time I do some project analysis (market and technical) for the other ideas

I am running 3 side projects and I have a full time job.

I have to say that my side projects are the major motivation of my life. I usually create a theme per day so that I can really focus. i.e. Monday Marketing, Tuesday Product etc

I have exactly the same problem... It's more and more easy to build something online.
so I am worried that more and more people will have this issue ;-)

Once you realize you cannot do everything, it's time to use famous regret minimization framework to decide what is the rea thing you want to do. For me the major step forward was to understand that I shouldn't do project about every thing I spend time on in my life and that I should focus only on the main project.

I too suffer from shiny object syndrome, and have hopped from project to project, wherever my interest takes me. Usually, this is bad ... but there are some ways to see this in a more positive light:

1. If you’re just interested in exploring and learning, then hoping from thing to thing might give you a chance to learn lots of different things (although no necessarily with great depth).
2. You can see what sticks, in both the sense of what captures your interest and what might be a profitable idea.
3. Not everything needs pressured. Sometimes it’s ok to keep it fun and allow yourself to just enjoy side-projects.

However, if you want to actually create a business, there are a lot of boring, mundane, and parts of that. You’ll have to walk in the same direction a long time and ignore shiny objects to succeed, do stuff that isn’t in your core competency, and do repetitive and boring stuff that just needs done. Not every side project needs to bear that weight.

This has been a real problem for me over the years (and for my co-founder who has to listen to all my new ideas!).

We’ve set up a to-do-list on trello which we organise based on priority. All the tasks have deadlines.

It’s quite simple but the act of thinking where something should be on the list helps me not get sidetracked too often.

I’ll often come up with a new idea, want to get started on it right away, but then go to the list and realise that actually I can’t start it until the following week as we’ve got another deadline approaching.

Consider this: any time you have multiple projects on the go, when one gets difficult you will be tempted to switch.