As a freelancer, I may have up to 3 or 4 active paying projects at any given time but I have worked over the years to discipline myself to only one personal project at a time. I have a queue of projects that I would like to get to and when I have an interesting thought about them I document it in a project document but I never do development on them until I am done with my current personal project. The other rule I have on this is that I am allowed to jump ship in the first 2 weeks of starting a new personal project an go to a different idea. This allows me enough time to really decide if this is the one I want to focus on.
The nice part about being disciplined in this manner, is that ideas that are nebulous in my mind are usually concrete by the time I get around to them. you would be surprised how much stuff gets worked out by just having a project floating around in your mind for a while.
Almost every time I go through my notes when starting a new project, I think "wow I am glad I let this one roll around in my head for a while" because the notes create a very clear and coherent idea, by the time I get around to working on it. And I can usually see by my first notes that if I would have dived right in, I would have spun my wheels reworking better ideas that just popped into my head at a later date.
The nice part about being disciplined in this manner, is that ideas that are nebulous in my mind are usually concrete by the time I get around to them. you would be surprised how much stuff gets worked out by just having a project floating around in your mind for a while.
Almost every time I go through my notes when starting a new project, I think "wow I am glad I let this one roll around in my head for a while" because the notes create a very clear and coherent idea, by the time I get around to working on it. And I can usually see by my first notes that if I would have dived right in, I would have spun my wheels reworking better ideas that just popped into my head at a later date.