[Lucas]

One of my favorite views, which I think might help address the problem of having a big batch of projects with nothing going on, is the context view grouped by project. That way, you only see the projects that actually have something in them to do. Also, if you have the contexts selected that you can work on, you only see the projects that you can get further along in completing. A lot of times I find there are projects that have just one or two things that I could possibly do and it is nice (to me at least) to be able to have moved them along as far as possible at this time.

I think that you also raise a question of whether you should have some projects sitting around empty because they are kind of ongoing things. If it were me, I don't think it would be a problem, because if you have a long-term focus of improvement, having a cleared out but uncompleted project in my mind helps remind you to think of new ways to advance that goal and a place to route ideas that you have.