Right now I have ten major projects on and all need tending to. Now, I don’t expect you to be interested in this but I do want you to help me come to a realisation.

Ten is too many.

I know I should shed some. I can think of one that will go away in a month; another that will be done in three months. That’s down to eight already, come on.

A third needs about five more days work and it’s gone completely. Seven.

Still too many, especially as I can casually say that about the project that needs five more days, that doesn’t change that fact that it has needed five more days for about four months now.

But if I’m not ready to shed anything yet and actually I am very ready to add things if you’ve got an interesting idea, I am trying something new tomorrow. Or rather today, by the time this first appears on The Blank Screen website.

I’m closing the doors for one day.

For Wednesday 14 January 2015 I am working on only one project. Nothing else allowed, not even emails, not even phone calls. We’ll see how I get on but even now, writing to you late the night before, I’m feeling a bit liberated. I was looking at a project plan just now, the very barest skeleton project management jobs and realised I was sighing as I went to add in some detail. As I went to colour it all in. And that realisation, plus the clear fact that I can’t finish it tonight, led me to this relief. I will not look at it tomorrow. I cannot.

If this works out, I may do what US writer David E Kelley used to do: he’d spend half the week writing crime series The Practice and half writing Ally McBeal. Ask him a Practice question on a McBeal day and he could not answer you. That was just not in his head.

I like the idea of nine projects being out of my head.

I just hope I do spend the day on the tenth and don’t just eat toast and watch TV.