I gave a talk at a local ICCA chapter last night, and met a project manager who told me he was managing 7 projects. I must have lost my poker face, because he chuckled and said, “Well, you do what you can with that many projects.”
You do. And I don’t buy that you’re actually managing them, or more than one of them. Sure, you might be doing damage control, or helping people see that they have a disaster. But you’re not evaluating and managing risk. You’re not checking in the team to know what done means. You’re not seeing if what you need from others across the organization will be ready when your project team needs it. Dare I say, you’re not managing. You’re busy. (Way too busy multitasking.) You might even be providing help to the projects, but you’re not being proactive and you’re not there when the team needs you.
I don’t buy this business that a project manager can actually manage several simultaneous projects. Even if the projects are small. You PMs who are trying to do this: your managers are deluding themselves. Your call on whether to tell them. (Don’t tell them they’re nuts, that’s a career-limiting-conversation 
