How many projects can you handle at once?
In other words... what are your capabilities?
What are your multi-project management skills?
Because I feel like people like Marc Lou or Levelsio do a lot of them and as solo founders, they are pretty fast and versatile (but they probably delegate some things to other freelancers - that's my guess).
How many projects can you handle at once? Either solo or together?
For example, I was handling 5 or 6 at one time, but it soon took its toll on my health. When it struck, I didn't care about project anymore.
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maximum 2, more its impossible, and I always try to be on the final stage of 1 to start with the second one
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@adam_outbbo I think this amount is the most sustainable and bearable (just in case it is paid well.)
Depends on the project's seriousness.
If it's a small tool that performs one function, you can create it in a couple of evenings, host it on Vercel, and forget about it forever. A lot of such projects can accumulate at once.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@senk0 with AI, most likely more people will create many projects but will not pay attention to distribution.
I am currently working on three, but it is tough!
Most times, I realised I could only truly focus on one, leaving the remaining two for a couple of days and then cycling through sequentially. Perhaps I should say 1? I am not sure anymore ;)
Three, for me, running a software company, a care home, and a cafe at the same time, and even three feels like the edge of what I can actually hold well. What Varun said about context switching being the real bottleneck matches my experience exactly. The hours don't disappear, but the quality of attention does, everything gets a slightly worse version of you.
What's helped most isn't trying to do more, it's building a way to know which of the three actually needs me right now instead of guessing based on whichever one is loudest. That's basically why I ended up building FounderFlow, an AI Chief of Staff that watches all three and tells me what actually needs my attention today instead of whatever is just making the most noise.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@stacywycof83995 Wow, how can you have a bandwidth to manage a café, that's a full-time job even when you are a business owner. Actually, anything physical-related business is difficult to lead.
@busmark_w_nika Fair pushback, and honestly you're not wrong that a café is a full-time job on its own. What makes it work isn't that I'm doing more hours, it's that I stopped trying to watch all three closely at once. Most days I'm actually only deep in one, and the other two get monitored rather than run day to day. The café has a manager who handles most of it without me, I just step in when something actually needs a decision. If I tried to be hands-on across all three the way I was with just the software company, it would fall apart, you're right about that.
minimalist phone: reduce your screentime
@stacywycof83995 at least, you delegated well so you have a little bit of free time :)
@busmark_w_nika Ha, "a little bit of free time" is generous, but fair! Honestly the bigger unlock wasn't free time, it was fewer false alarms. Before FounderFlow I'd get pulled into the cafe over things that didn't actually need me, just because they were loud that day. Now I only step in when something's genuinely flagged as needing a decision, which is a smaller list than my anxiety used to tell me it was.
Interesting question, and honestly one I think about a lot.
I am one of 6 co-founders, so the "solo" comparison to Marc Lou or Levels does not fully apply to us. We each carry 2 to 3 things at once, and trust each other enough that not everyone needs to know everything all the time.
For me, I am a software engineer by trade, so I usually have one or two dev projects running in parallel. AI has genuinely helped there, especially for getting back into context on something you have not touched in a few days.
On top of that I handle a big chunk of our sales, which is consulting, helping companies build automations and data tools. In 30 minutes with someone you have to figure out if there is an opportunity, what it actually is, whether it is technically doable, and get them to a second meeting. Not my background at all, learning as I go.
So I cap at 3 things, counting sales as one of them.
Beyond that it starts to show. And I have stopped believing that more hours means better output, especially in software. I would rather work less and work well.
4-5 at max. Based on the stage they are in.
For my role, I have to remember and stay updated on all client projects.So... ~5, at max... regardless of the complexity
But I don't develop the project - if you are asking from a developer pov.
If I were working solo, I’d probably stick to just two projects at a time. I’m not great at multitasking, and I’ve noticed it starts affecting the quality of creative work pretty quickly.
With a team though, it’s a different story. Since we have designers, motion artists, and video editors, we’re currently handling around 6 to 7 projects at once. Some of them depend on multiple people, while others are more straightforward and handled by one skill set. From a management perspective, I’m comfortable juggling multiple projects. At one point, we were handling close to 10 projects at the same time with a team of about 15 people.
Currently, I manage two application development projects for my employer and two personal projects, in addition to the client projects handled by my team.
However, this entails long days and nights, as well as short weekends.
For context, I work for an IT company that acts as both a systems integrator and a software vendor.
Solo, I have handled around 7-9 projects and with the team its about 12-18.
It's been like this always without compromising on the quality
I've found that the real limit isn't the number of projects.
It's the number of projects that require active decision-making at the same time.
A project with clear context, documented decisions, and obvious next steps can sit idle for weeks and be resumed quickly.
A project that lives only in your head consumes energy even when you're not working on it.
The hidden cost isn't execution.
It's reconstructing context every time you come back.