The summer I mistook capacity for focus

The most misleading part of taking on too much is that, for a while, it works.

I have always been hungry to make things. An idea does not need to be fully formed before I start imagining the product, opening Figma or creating a repository. Some of those ideas have gone well and others have not. JGS Store has given me plenty of both.

It also gave me confidence. I knew I could start with very little, work through the problems and eventually put something in front of real people. After doing that a few times, my question slowly changed. I stopped asking whether a project deserved my attention and started asking whether I could fit it in.

The answer was usually yes.

A summer that looked productive#

During the summer of 2026, I launched Balance, a personal finance app for iOS. I designed it, built it and brought it to a point where other people could use it.

At the same time, I was developing a new product for JGS Store. This was more than maintaining the existing business. We had to make product decisions, design the experience and turn another idea into something we could sell.

A business partner and I were also building Faktu. It came with a different set of questions around invoicing, companies and the arrival of VeriFactu.

Those were only the projects with names. Around them, I was doing freelance work for individuals and companies, plus the smaller one-off jobs that kept appearing. They rarely looked important enough to plan a week around. They still broke the week into pieces.

There was no steady summer routine behind any of this. I spent part of it travelling around the United States and another part with my family on the Costa Brava. I wanted to be present for both. Instead, work often came with me. I could close the laptop, but there was usually an unanswered message or an unfinished decision still running in my head.

↳One summer, several competing fronts

01Balance

Design, build and launch an iOS app.New product

02JGS Store

Build a new launch while continuing to run the store.Active business

03Faktu

Define and build the product with a partner.Shared project

04Freelance work

Deliver work for individuals, companies and one-off clients.Client commitments

On paper, the result looked good. Balance launched. The JGS product moved forward. So did Faktu, and I delivered the client work. I do not consider the summer a failure. Quite the opposite, and that is why the lesson took me a while to see.

Did I get it all done? Yes. Did I do it in the best possible way? I am sure I did not.

I budgeted hours, not attention#

I planned as if every free hour were interchangeable. If a task needed three hours and I could find three empty spaces in the calendar, it seemed possible. But a difficult product decision does not fit neatly between a client message and the next meeting. It needs enough uninterrupted time to understand the problem, try something and change your mind.

That was the cost I kept leaving out.

One day I would be deep in a design decision for Balance. The next, I would switch to JGS. Then I would return to Faktu and spend the first part of the session reconstructing where we had left off. The work was moving, but some of my best hours went into repeatedly getting back to the point where useful work could begin.

The smaller commitments made this worse. A message may take ten minutes, but it can interrupt the one hour in which you were finally making progress. The unfinished decisions followed me too. They occupied attention even when I was supposedly working on something else, or not working at all.

This is where I confused capacity with focus. I was capable of keeping every project alive. I was much less capable of giving each one the depth it deserved.

Being able to do it became the excuse#

There was probably some ego in this. I liked seeing myself as someone who could handle a lot and still deliver. Every completed task reinforced that idea, even when I knew the process behind it had been more fragmented than it needed to be.

Choosing one project felt, somehow, less ambitious. Saying yes to another one felt like proof that I was progressing. Written down, that logic looks obviously flawed. It did not feel obvious in June.

I had treated the ability to carry several projects as a reason to carry them. But capacity says nothing about priority. It does not tell me which project could become genuinely good with another month of attention, or what I am giving up each time I open a new front.

I cannot know what a different summer would have produced. Balance might have shipped earlier. The JGS product might have been more polished. We might have answered some of Faktu’s difficult questions sooner. I only know that each project received a version of my attention that had already been divided.

September tested the system#

Towards the end of the summer, I started wondering whether I could maintain this in the long run. A few intense months are one thing. A way of working with no end date is something else.

Then, in September, I started university. To nobody’s surprise, maintaining the same level of focus became difficult. The projects did not disappear when classes began. Neither did the client work or the small commitments. I simply had fewer unclaimed hours to absorb all of them.

University did not create the problem. It exposed it. I had built a workload that worked only while almost every free hour could be turned into work. Once something permanent took its place in the week, there was no margin left.

I could probably force that pace for a while longer. But the question is no longer whether I can survive it. It is whether I can keep doing work I am proud of, enjoy the process and still have room for a life around it. Right now, the answer is no.

What I want to change#

If I repeated the summer, I would choose one project to be in active development. The others would have a defined maintenance mode and a clear point at which I could return to them. Not “later”, but after a launch, a finished version or a decision that closes the current stage.

This summer changed how I decide whether to accept new work. I used to consider each opportunity on its own. Does it interest me? Can I do it? When both answers were yes, accepting felt natural. But an opportunity never arrives on an empty calendar. The question I had left out was what would receive less of me if I said yes.

Learning to say no has been uncomfortable. I tend to associate it with letting an opportunity pass, or with not being hungry enough to find a way. This summer taught me something less dramatic: a good project can still arrive at the wrong time. Refusing it now does not make the idea worse. Accepting it without enough attention might.

There is also another person on the other side of most commitments. A quick yes can feel generous. When I later give someone a distracted version of my work, it is not. Sometimes a clear no is the most respectful answer I can give, both to them and to the people I have already said yes to.

I do not want to make no my default. I want my yes to mean more. Before accepting something, I need to know where its time and attention will come from. New work should replace something, not quietly join everything already there. If I cannot name what will pause, I probably do not have room.

My problem was never a lack of lists or calendars. I was using organisation to avoid making a choice. The harder lesson is to accept the cost before I start, rather than spread it across every project afterwards.

Ambition that survives September#

I do not regret launching Balance, building for JGS Store or continuing with Faktu. I learned a lot, and I proved to myself that I can keep several things moving at once.

I just do not think that is a useful thing to keep proving.

I still want to build products. I still want the hunger that makes me open Figma before an idea is fully ready. What I want is fewer simultaneous promises and more time to see what one of them can become when it receives my full attention.

For me, “less is more” is no longer advice about minimalism. It is a decision about quality and about how long I want to keep doing this. I do not want less ambition. I want ambition that still works when September arrives.