I’m going through this now, and it’s negative effects can be difficult to mitigate. I’ll admit I am prone to this – I often try to do too many projects at once, and if some dire event comes along in my personal life that requires my attention, it can be enough to derail my precarious allocation of resources to everything else. As you can imagine, this can lead to less than optimal outcomes, and causes a significant amount of (unnecessary) personal distress.
The trick is not to panic (which I’m good at), and stay focused on juggling my attention (which I’m not so good at). The problem is, I am also very good at playing out and preparing for worst case scenarios, and this can be counter-productive. For example, when I was diagnosed with cancer, I became very calm and focused on surviving, while at the same time preparing for imminent prolonged disease and death. As you might imagine, this effectively prevented me from pursuing anything outside of work for several years.
The first step in preventing the derailment of multiple projects in progress is awareness. Then a calm and thoughtful re-examination of your priorities and how you are spending your time. Use your time and energy wisely – time is the one thing you can never get back…