Ask HN: How do you switch between projects simply, quickly and efficiently?

3 points by supacruz 9 years ago | 1 comment

I work on multiple projects at once, mainly saas / web apps. I do everything: sketching, designing, developing, writing, marketing, etc.

For each project I need to launch multiple apps and documents: a few terminals (let's say task runner and server), at least 1 browser window, an IDE like Sublime, and maybe Sketch, or a spreadsheet, or some evernotes, etc.

Because I'm working on 2 to 3 different projects in the same day, switching a lot between them, I prefer to keep ALL the apps and documents open for all those projects. All. At the same time.

Which is, if you ask my laptop (more specifically, its RAM), a bad idea.

Now I have 2 (unsatisfying) solutions:

1. close all apps and documents for projects which I'm not actively working on. Then, few minutes or hours later, spend multiple real minutes opening all the apps and documents related to that project, so I can pick up work where I left it (hoping I didn't forget what I was doing, but that's another issue).

2. be a lot more organized and focus on 1 single project per day. Heck, that would still mean I have to switch apps every day. So let's say I need to focus on 1 project per week. I'm not sure I can do that. I know, context-switching is bad, etc. but I can't see myself working on 1 single thing per day.

Am I simply bad at organizing my work? Should I try sticking to 1 single project per day? Does anyone else have the same issues, and need to do a dozen different things every day, on different projects?

What solutions do you have to switch between projects simply, quickly and efficiently?

supacruz 9 years ago |

What I've tried so far:

- setting up shortcuts / shell scripts to quickly open my terminals + apps. That's cool for the first few days, then scripts are obsolete because no, I don't need to open Sketch anymore, and the command to run the server has changed again, and... ok, I'll just launch everything by hand.

- same solution but a bit more elegant with https://github.com/TomAnthony/itermocil/. Same issue.

- this one is definitely a win: I set up different tab sessions, ready to be opened in 1 click, with this Chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/edacconmaakjimmfgn.... This answers only a small part of the problem though.

- use multiple desktops (macOS): all apps related to the same project are grouped on the same workspace. I like this a lot, making it really easy to "switch context" between different projects. But that doesn't solve at all the performance issue.