I’ve been working on multiple projects recently. I’ve been managing multiple work projects effectively for a long time. I’m talking about working on multiple projects outside of my job. I am pretty busy at my work. In addition I do an open source development project. I’ve started this blog. And I’m developing one more application that is very important for me.

My normal day goes like such: wake up early, do some development for one of my personal projects, work on a personal project during commute to work, do my job, commute home and work on one of my projects again and may be some coding after dinner. I love my personal projects a lot and it gives me enough enthusiasm to keep this schedule.

Juggling job and personal projects was challenging for me at first. And that’s where I’ve developed this process that I would like to share:

Every time I’m going to stop working on one project and work on another I record what I was doing and (even more important) what I have to do when I resume working on the same project.

E.g.: fixed 80% of the bug #347. Finish bug fixing and update unit tests.

Simple? Yes. But it makes switching from one project to another less painful and increases productivity dramatically. It helps to get into the interrupted project much faster.

I’ve also realized that the same trick can be used in the office as well: if my development activity is going to be interrupted by a meeting I write down: was doing this, start with this after the meeting.

Try it and maybe it will help you too. Or maybe not. It depends.