[Marek Kowalczyk]

I wouldn't use the word "legislate" but rather "control work in process (WIP)".

If you have too many open items, you're fooling yourself. You are very likely to engage in bad multitasking, which will result in a very low project completion ratio, stress, feeling of being overwhelmed etc.

And that's what I'm experiencing and I assume I'm not unique. The only solution is to freeze a significant number of projects/tasks, swiftly complete the active ones and gradually defrost the frozen ones.

It's proven to work. It's not only that we can do that; we actually must do that to be effective rather than busy.