On episode 254 of the Deep Questions podcast, computer scientist Cal Newport mentioned his five Laws of Less. The third one—reducing overhead to enable deep focus—caught my attention. The premise is that by juggling less, you can focus more deeply, which yields higher quality.
Keeping track of many projects works against excelling at all of them; thus, keeping things minimal is useful advice. There is a but, though.
Overhead is like water: too little is bad, and so is too much.
It is dose-dependent—which is obvious. But the form of the dependence is not: I believe it is not linear but has a shape of an inverted U. Consider the following figure:
The horizontal axis shows increasing overhead, which is proportional to the number of projects (I only consider overhead from managing multiple projects, not, e.g., the time required to get office supplies ), whereas the vertical axis denotes the overall utility. By that, I mean the amalgam of impact, level of stress, and work-life balance.
Overhead is not useful per se, though since it is inevitable, my point is that we should not eliminate all of it. Why? Overhead is a proxy for the number of projects; thus, if chosen wisely, for the diversity of your portfolio. Think of it as an insurance policy: you do not want to have all eggs in the same basket. And research can be risky, especially when wandering into uncharted territories. Even seemingly low-hanging fruits can turn out to be a dead-end street.
Actionable advice
Reflect on your projects’ overhead. If you are drowning in emails and meetings, you probably have too many; if bordering on nothing, then check out the barbell strategy to diversify