My grandfather grew up during the car modification boom of the 30s and 40s and is one of the world’s experts in modifying the Ford Flathead V8 from that era.
He uses the rule of 3 projects to maintain productivity. At all times you should have at least 3 active projects that fall into the following categories:
First, the project you are currently working on. You can only truly be working on one project at a time, but you may switch between projects fairly quickly.
Second, the project that you are thinking about. Often, as he was making or installing a part into a new engine, his mind would wander to another project. Having another project for your subconscious to chew on is important, and allows you to deal with the third category of projects.
Third, are the projects that you’re stuck on or frustrated with. This is the only category that can have multiple projects at once, but too many in this category will dilute focus and make progress slow.
In practice, the way this works is you’re working on a project while trying to figure out how to solve a problem on a second project that’s currently stuck. Then, inevitably you’ll have a problem with the current project that can’t be immediately solved or needs to be put on the back burner to regain interest. When that happens, you start working on the project you were thinking about and start thinking about one of the projects that were on the back burner previously. In this way, projects can be rotated without burning out on any particular project.
