The Multi-Project Programmer

From my perspective it's the threshold effect: in every endeavor there is a threshold which is hard to reach, but it gets easier for one to replicate similar things after passing it.

It is hard to find an important problem and create a viable mass market solution for it. By accomplishing this once, you get important skills such as time and project management, marketing and engineering skills etc. Acquiring those skills are hard work, but once you master them, you can apply those to everything you do. So naturally it gets easier to create new solutions.

There might be a network effect too. Creating a great project might enlarge your network with other people who are creating important solutions. I think this would set you in an interesting position; people would come to you with their most important problems they wanted to see solved since you have a proven track record. Ideas breed ideas. This might help with finding another important problem worth solving.

The most common thing about those creating great things time after time, is their production/consumption ratio. Humans tend to lean on consumption side and since the world is full of distraction we are wasting most of our valuable time on consuming info-junk. The over achievers I had a chance to meet were always skewed towards the production side. They almost always learned new things with a purpose. Also the threshold effect might be the cause of this high production/consumption ratio. Creating one great project might have created an emotional and hormonal concoction, a high, that motivates people to focus on creating things.

Accomplishing one great task, those people has the confidence and swag that they can achieve another one. People around them would cheer them up instead of hindering their motivation by reminding them how hard that task is. They would not remind them that they might be wasting their time by tackling that huge problem. They would find eager help and funding when they need.

Those are the first few things that came to my mind when I think about what factors might create multi-project programmers.