It is constant non-stop communication and people wanting me to do things for them all the time. If I never slept and never left the forum I would never get to everything people want from me on the forum.
This sounds very familiar to me from 30 years of running my own businesses. If you don't have an external situation like a boss, a company structure, or childcare, to force you to stop - you don't!
It's a mix of servicing something you love, feeling a strong sense of duty, and the fear that if you don't answer right away they'll go off in a huff and you lose them.
I agree with previous suggestions to delegate - create moderators if you can to take care of the more standard stuff.
But if you won't use my suggestion you won't have the extra energy to do that. It takes time and care to train mods - get them used to which things to answer which to leave alone for you/ and to discreetly spot check how they are doing.
Also even if you do get mods going you'll find the work expands to fill the new empty spaces the mods create for you.
I have two suggestions.
As you wisely said yourself even if you worked 24/7 you wouldn't get on top of it.
This is because you have very high standards - you WANT to do it all, and do it well, not just a quick 3 word answer. (Also you need mods!)
But to be realistic you CANNOT do it all.
More important if you try to you'll collapse with exhaustion into being ill. Seriously. It happened to me in my first big project and I've seen so many others burn out. If you don't get sick physically you'll get sick of it - and reach a point where you simply can't bear to do it. They will all start to feel like whining babies and you'll come to hate them.
That is not going to give them your best service. No good you going into collapse - for them as well as no good for you.
The ANSWER is to set yourself manageable working hours, including that unimaginable thing TIME OFF.
Ouch! Pretty drastic stuff I know. But remember, you are doing this so the project can survive.
ONE
Check your statistics and see which day of the week traffic is lowest. Take that as your DAY OFF! If you can't cope with a full day take half a day off. Whichever you do you'll have bags of new energy on your return. You'll work faster and more efficiently.
Set a period of the day that is your Do Not Disturb time.
Again this will renew your energy so you work faster and more efficiently.
So the time you take for yourself will actually mean you get more things done. Better speed and efficiency because you rest/ take time off.
For the rest - you know people are quite surprised to get replies straight away. I notice this with a supersonic mod like Brogan who is very fast. They won't mind if they don't get instant service some of the time. The few that do are the clients you wouldn't allow to bully you anyway. A few clients have to be tagged to treat with distance and rationed attention.
TWO
Learn to triage. This means to tag things with priority so you deal with them in a planned way.
(If there isn't a software mod for moderators to do this, there ought to be.)
Allocate a status 1, 2 or 3 to each incoming task.
Group 1
Posts or other tasks that ABSOLUTELY CANNOT be left until tomorrow.
This should be a moderately sized group as you learn to recognise REAL RED ALERT PRIORITY.
Group 2
These are posts or any other tasks which wouldn't cause immediate disaster if they were done tomorrow.
This should be a larger group that the red alert group. Really think it through - is this going to cause DISASTER if I leave it till tomorrow?
Group 3
These are posts or tasks which are really not urgent and can get done 'sometime.'
It takes a little practice and courage to allocate to this group but there ARE always tasks that belong in it. New members don't, and existing members with serious problems using the board - serious ones. Other than that it's your judgement.
How you use your triage once you've done it is
ALWAYS get the red group done asap.
Then in your available time
TODAY do as much as you can of the orange group.
You are mst unlikely to finish all of both groups - you might not even get as far as the
orange grou - but remember - this is a group that CAN be left till tomorrow.
NEXT DAY - redo the triage. Some of the
orange group will now belong in the
red group
Funny thing is that a few of the
orange group will drop to the green group. When they are not new they look a lot less urgent.
A lot of the
green group will dissolve and go away! Magic!
In forum terms this disappearance is likely to happen because forum members see that a fairly simple request is unanswered and answer it for you. At the moment they probably don't do this as you have trained them to leave it all to you by doing it all. When they see things not done they'll be far more likely to activate and be useful - at least a few of them will. (There's the 80% or more who are just drones but that can't be helped.)
Some tasks also disappear because the situation changes - a new software mod or new policy appears so that task is no longer relevant.
Basically -
don't try to wrap your life around the work because that way madness and illness awaits which will NOT do your project good.
Define your working hours and fit the work into them.
Create mods. Even one mod can make a big difference.
Triage your tasks every day.