mobweb

I've been consulting for a while now. During this time I've taken on every kind of project: From small bugfixes that took a couple of hours to launching new projects that took multiple months to finish.

Now I'm at a point where I think I can make enough money by only working on the latter: Projects that I can implement from scratch, and that take at least a couple of weeks to implement.

But at the same time I get a lot of requests for smaller projects that take just a couple of days from start to finish.

While I like working on these smaller projects as well, I feel that they may harm my productivity in the long run: Always juggling multiple projects (at least one big project and a couple of small ones) means that in my mind I'm constantly occupied and there's always something that should be (and can be) done quickly, as opposed to bigger projects where there aren't any immediate deadlines and I can plan my work better, and also take a few days off every now and then without feeling guilty about it.

I've been thinking lately if I should perhaps ditch these smaller projects completely, and only take on large projects.

But at the same time I think I would feel bad not accepting these smaller projects for various reasons:

- It's always nice to get to know more people, I might profit from such a relationship later on - A small project might turn into a big one - A few small projects still equal a nice profit - It might hurt my "image" if I have to reject too many requests

So I've thought about perhaps adding additional requirements for small projects, e.g.:

- Minimum budget size for any kind of project that I take on - Selling my work in "packages", where I tell the customer that I can help them, but they will have to buy at least N hours of my time

Perhaps somebody else has been at this point before and could share their experience?