Why the Best Self-Producers Live to Multi-Task

One of the built-in protections offered by our chaotic lives and structureless jobs is their ability to shield us from taking on too many things at a time. In a sense, because our days can feel so flux and unpredictable, we’re usually forced to narrow our focus and fasten our attention on a single task to stay sane. This can be a powerful and protective silver lining: Can you imagine producing a short film, doing an off-Broadway play, and facilitating a regular script-reading club all at the same time? Hard pass.

And yet, limiting ourselves to one self-produced project at a time deprives us of so many of the amazing benefits that come from being one’s own boss in the first place. Now you are probably asking, “How, Joshua? How can we possibly add even more to our plates? We can’t all be the next Shonda Rhimes like you are.”

OK, so maybe I took some liberties with the Shonda comparison, but the part about you asking me “how?”  is almost certainly accurate. And, so, I will tell you how. But first, a short explanation of the time-boxed project:

Longer term projects have the most significant potential for career progression, an incredible deepening of your collaborative network, and even the chance to see financial gain (yes, really). These projects usually last three to five years, and include things like story and script development, as well as seeking investors and creative team turnover. Mid-term projects lasting between one and three years are substantive enough to allow for regular content updates and a meaningful improvement of your craft, but carry a little bit less risk and speculation. Finally, short-term projects that last up to six months allow for rapid relationship building, an immediate creative outlet, and something to simply talk about with your supporters, reps, and colleagues.

So which of these projects do you prioritize first? Get ready for it: You don’t. I encourage artists to be managing three self-produced projects at any given time. The trick, of course, is having these projects develop along parallel timelines (long, mid, and short term), allowing you to use incremental working patterns to your advantage. And because these projects are intended to be collaborative, they’ll give you a great reason to shatter your illusions of control and practice delegating work to others!

The other reason we encourage our clients to juggle three self-produced projects at a given time is to maximize the objective-driven potential of their work. What do I mean? Let me start with this simple premise: All self-produced projects need to meet at least one of the following objectives to be of true value:

• Creative Outlet

• Community Expansion

• Community Cultivation

• Targeted Relationship Building

• Feeling of Lack of Movement

• Targeted Craft Improvement

• Material for Reel

• Marketing Content

• Leadership Building Skills

• Cultivating Investors / Donors

• Additional Income Streams

• Exploring Career Possibilities

• Paid Opportunity

But here’s the thing: It’s near impossible for a single self-produced project to meet many of the above objectives. That’s what I mean by maximizing objective-driven potential: Three self-produced projects will surely check off more of these criteria than just one will.

Within today’s discourse, which champions single-tasking and scolds us for succumbing to distractions, focusing on a single project may sound like the more productive thing to do. And there’s no doubt that devoting your attention to a given task is preferable to being otherwise sloppy and scatterbrained. But the problem with focusing on only one project is we often put unrealistic and uninformed expectations on their results. By putting all of our eggs into a single creative basket, we load that basket up with false hopes, insane pressure, and other baggage (i.e. “This project needs to work out because I want to show-run and star in my own show in 3 years.”)

Your big dreams, however, won’t result from the surprise success of a single project. You’ll likely need to spread your efforts incrementally across a wider range of projects, in an effort to develop your under-experienced voice and have a diverse portfolio of work to show off while you’re learning to pitch your big break. Now is the time to embrace long-term diversity over short-term fixation and learn to love to multi-task.