How makers stay productive

I think it depends on your personality. I tend dislike multi tasking, so I just work a week or at least a few days on one project until I reach a milestone, then I switch to the next one.

However, if your time is limited, I would recommend you just focus on one project. Building stuff takes a ton of time no matter what. If you want to stand out and building something impressive, it requires your full dedication.

I run several projects, but they are all interconnected, so you could see them as one big project.

Scheduling and patience. Including client work I think I have about 6 or 7 active projects (I might have forgotten a few ) I like it though and I think because I have worked with a variety of clients I got very good at and used to working on multiple projects at the same time.

Patience is important, I'm never in a hurry to get something shipped. I take a very long view on things, I'm not really looking to ship a full featured product in a week, I will take my time on the quality and get it right.

Scheduling and Deep work are critical though. Deep work is the important part. I can get 4 / 5 hour blocks of no distractions when I can focus on a task or features for a project.

I've removed context switching from my day, so I schedule the day based on themes, for example, so I might make Monday a client day but Tuesday I work on my own project. I will not work on multiple projects in the same day if I can help it, (emergencies happen though)

Backing that all up I have a trello board and Makerlog, Trello has a board with tasks for all projects on it, I can get a really high level overview of what I'm up to. Markerlog, lets me track what I have been doing, so I can review it and see where my energy is going.

That's just quick break down of how I do it, I hope it helps. But as @gabriel4649 says it massively depends on your personality and if you have time.