97 projects. And the sentence "I have no idea where to start."

The number comes from a conversation in spring. The client had opened his project list, scrolled a bit, and then said that sentence I hear in some form almost every week. He took the 97 for the diagnosis.

It is not. David Allen puts thirty to a hundred projects as the normal range for somebody with a full working life and a family. Anyone carrying responsibility at work and owning more than a houseplant at home gets there quickly. A short project list is no sign of clarity; usually it is a sign of incomplete capture.

The problem was a different one, and it is right there in the sentence. He opened the project list in order to decide what to do now.

Nothing on the project list is something you can do

A project is an outcome, not an action. “Launch the new product” is not something you can start at half past ten. If you look at that list in the morning and feel unable to act, that is not overwhelm, that is the correct response to a list built for another purpose.

The project list is a completeness check. It answers the question of whether I have everything in view that I have committed to. You ask that question once a week, in the weekly review.

The question “what do I do now” is answered by the next-actions lists. Those are sorted by context, hold concrete actions, and you can open them at half past ten and get going.

Mix those two lists, or use one for the other, and you get exactly the feeling described above. And no amount of re-sorting fixes it while the second list is missing.

What is actually on a list of 97

Before you sort, clear out. In practice a list like that consists in good part of things that have no business being there.

Areas of responsibility in disguise. “Bookkeeping”, “Marketing”, “Health”. Those are not projects, because they are never finished. The test is simple: can you imagine ticking it off? For “Bookkeeping” never; for “Hand the 2025 annual accounts to the tax adviser” yes. Entries like that are particularly paralysing, because the brain senses there is no end to them.

Someday/maybe. The language course, the book project, the garage. Things where realistically nothing will happen in the coming weeks. They do not belong on the active list but on one of their own, which you skim during the weekly review. For most clients a third moves off here, and that is the single biggest effect of the whole clean-up.

Projects without a next action. They sit there, but nothing moves. They are the real reason for the bad conscience when you look at the list, because your brain notices at every scroll that a decision is open here. Every active project needs exactly one defined next action. If none comes to mind for a project, the next action is often “think through how this is even supposed to work”, and that is a legitimate entry.

Of 97, experience says thirty to fifty active projects remain after this pass. Still a lot. But honest.

Areas of responsibility: what they can do, what they cannot

Only now is grouping worth it. Areas of responsibility are the level above projects, the areas that need ongoing attention and are never completed. For most people there are between ten and twenty, work and private life combined.

The benefit is real. When I open the Finance area on a Friday and four projects sit there, that is a quantity my head can handle. And looking at the areas shows immediately where nothing has happened for weeks. If there has not been a single project under “Health” for four months, that is no longer a sorting question, that is information.

There is, however, a methodical objection, and it is a fair one. A categorised project list tempts you into reviewing only the areas that are currently pressing. But the point of that pass is that once a week you see every open commitment, including the one you do not want to think about. Those are exactly the ones you reliably avoid when they are neatly folded away.

So my recommendation: group, yes, but the weekly review goes across every area. No exceptions, including the boring ones. Unfold everything, walk through it, fold it back. If you cannot keep that up, you will end up with more overview from the flat list than from the beautiful structure.

Doing it in practice

Trello: one board for projects, one list per area of responsibility, one card per project. Next actions do not belong in the card as a checklist but on a separate board or in your task app, otherwise you have to click through the project structure again while in working mode.

Obsidian or another markdown-based system: the PARA structure with separate folders for projects and areas works well, as long as every project note links to its area. The area then gets an overview of its projects by itself, through the backlinks. The advantage over folders: a project can belong to two areas without you having to choose.

Whatever the tool: the area structure must not slow down creating a project. If capturing means first working out where the card belongs, you will capture less. Better everything into one inbox and the assignment during the weekly review.

The thing about paper

Thinking a project through is not the same as storing it. For the thinking, paper is often better than any tool, because nothing about the structure is given. No fields, no hierarchy, no decision about which project the thought belongs to.

For larger things I do this in a café with a sheet of A4 turned sideways. When the plan holds, the results move into the system: the next actions onto the lists, the sheet photographed as reference material for the project. The photo is not decoration, it is the state of my thinking at that moment, and when I come back in three weeks I am inside it again in two minutes.

Where it typically fails

The structure gets built, the next-actions lists are still missing. The project list then looks lovely and the paralysis stays, because the underlying problem was never addressed.

Too many areas. Create thirty areas of responsibility and you have only pushed the clutter up one level. Ten to twenty is almost always enough.

Someday/maybe never gets reviewed. A list you never look at is a graveyard. Skim it once a week and it works as a valve.

Re-sorting replaces working. A tidy system feels like progress. It only is progress if somebody then does the next actions.

Common questions

How many projects are normal?

Thirty to a hundred open at once is usual with a full working and private life. What matters is not the count but that every active project has a defined next action and that the list is reviewed completely once a week.

What is the difference between a project and an area of responsibility?

A project has an outcome and therefore an end; you can tick it off. An area of responsibility runs continuously and is never finished. “Hand over the annual accounts” is a project, “Bookkeeping” is an area.

Why does my project list paralyse me?

Usually because it is being used for the wrong purpose. The project list answers whether you have everything in view, not what you should do now. The question about the next action is answered by context-sorted next-actions lists.

Should I group my project list by area?

Grouping helps with the overview and reveals neglected areas. It does carry the risk that uncomfortable areas stay folded shut during the weekly review. Group, yes, but open every area during the review.

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Open your project list and mark everything where no next action comes to mind within five seconds. Those marks are your actual work for the next weekly review.