Jerry,
The honesty is much appreciated. I will be blunt, as I feel it is most helpful.
In terms of your posting and commenting speed/quality, I think you may have set a bar that is too high. I know you have multiple other aspects to your business, such as YT, and Steemit is only one piece of that pie. I think you may be holding yourself to Steemit standards that would require you to make Steemit pretty much your only focus. (I assume, based on the maturity of your YT account and other business aspects, it would not make sense to drop them.)
I think, with regards to projects, you yourself gave us the answer to this in one of your YT vids I once saw. You talked about the benefits of hiring friends and paying well. I think you may need to hire some help here in the community to, at the very least, help you with some individual projects if you cannot table them entirely.
For example, if you want to get more done in chat, setup a channel and appoint some moderators, just like the Minnow Support Project did. The key is to have a few (semi) trusted agents willing to work on your projects, or your channel, when you can't. If you can't get trusted help for free from the community, set a bounty. SBD always talks.
To that end, I recommend coming up with (or soliciting) a name for the overall project, and I strongly suggest one that doesn't include any proper names. (IE. Minnow Support Project not Aggroed's Support Project).
Assuming you want to continue with the 7 projects you listed above, here are my comments:
Crowdfunded Steemit ad campaigns.
This project is not so much incomplete, but ongoing. I've seen some of your reports on the ads that run, so you delivered. I would minimize these efforts going forward and count this one as a win. If you continue, stick to short posts, preferably one that can be mostly re-used each time. If people want to donate and have you toss up a quick campaign, they can, but a ton of original content on these posts makes little sense. Reduce the frequency of the posts, and they will be less effort.
I know the ads are for Steemit, but generally speaking, it is not in your benefit to market a product (Jerry) that you are effectively sold out of right now.
SteemJ freelancing platform.
I don't know as much about this one. I think you are stretched to thin to be managing developers working at a project, or QA'ing their submissions for the bounty. I would completely table this idea indefinitely if you can confirm that nobody is working on this bounty and will feel slighted. If they are, confirm a rough %age of work they have produced via their submitted code body (may require 3rd party help) and pay them a negotiable, pro-rated SBD bounty. Consider it a minor business expense for buying some of your time back without any PR negatives. From what I can tell looking through the comments on the 2000 SBD bounty post, you probably won't even need to pay anything.
Steemit meetup.
From your original post, it sounds like most of the legwork on this is done. I volunteer to help you get any of this stuff done that needs doing. Reply here with my best way to contact you privately and I'll hop in however I can help.
Becoming a witness.
As I noted above, I think you should table this or run a minimal-effort backup witness on the side without soliciting new votes. I will tell you frankly you are already taking heat in other users posts for "buying witness votes" and I figure they presume you are doing it for financial gain. Tabling this indefinitely will open up your plate more and allow you to calm these voices. You can come back later and will appear even more genuine with the project since you thought it over and re-committed. This would probably allow you to do a better job on this later.
Upvotable curation project.
I haven't had the time to personally participate in this project. It looks like one of your more successful post series and it seems to be helping the community. I think you should keep it up, but template-ize it as much as you can. I know with all the work you do online I am probably preaching to the choir here, but you probably do not need a ton of unique content for each of these posts since you are calling for others to make submissions. Remind readers that the effort in those posts, for you, is all the reading of submissions and they cannot reasonably expect you to add much content in the post or the comments.
Steemit video course.
I'm not totally sure which project this is. If it's the series of tutorial videos, table it. Other users are probably doing those tutorials and we can find a link for anyone that needs specific info. If there remains no good tutorial source later, you can come back to it, presuming the processes have not changed.
Authoring posts daily.
This is one of the most important things you are doing. Possibly the most important. It also overlaps with your other ventures. Your strategy of posting transcripts and video links from your YT account here, with some additional content, is great. I end up watching the video on YT, then skimming the post and hitting the comments. You can focus on keeping up your posting and your YT videos, which (I presume from the outside) are two of your main sources of profit.
DO NOT sacrifice authoring posts for these other items on this list.
I will try to comment on your bottom questions briefly.
#1&2 – I don't think these will help, because they can be abused to grab your eyes, which spammers, trolls, and low-efforters will immediately do. Good place to start brainstorming though.
#3 – I think that the extra effort required to be a witness may not be in your best interest. It seems to me to be one of the higher-learning curve activities on the Steemit platform, and I think you could better use that time and energy on your other projects.
#4 – Yes, chat is impermanent. You simply don't have the time to interact there at the moment if you are feeling burnt out. You should only go if it feels like leisure/relaxing. For now.
#5 - If you are doing 3 posts a day, you can also drop to 2. You could do one tutorial post and one crypto post, although as I noted above I think tutorial posts viability will wind down.
#6 – Comment interaction should be quality dependent. I try to give everyone who replies 1-5% on my blog, but I have far fewer to vote for. I'd say you should 1% any comment that you read that isn't spam – do not upvote "first", follow4follow, posts begging for you to read their posts, etc. I try to upvote comments that are higher-quality, or respond to my requests directly, at a higher percentage. I also always upvote those who debate with me, to reward the effort and to be "on the record as civil". Upvote everyone else that you read and is genuinely adding more than "good post!", but realize that nobody can reasonably expect you to read everything, nor upvote everything.
#7 – I treat Steemit's like someone else's house. I'm paranoid to do anything anyone dislikes. If you apply that strategy, you'll do OK. I'd need more specifics on what you mean here to say more.
#8 – Covered above.
You are in danger of burning out on your projects, which is probably a feeling you can remember from Dash. I think this is mostly because you are simply doing too much, your heart and your talents are both in the right place. Steemit seems like a great place for you (spaking selfishly, were I in your shoes). If you end up burning out, I think you will have lost a great opportunity. I also think you will have lost a lot of credibility, in general. I personally came to Steemit because of your videos, and I appreciated your honesty about the Dash situation. It will be difficult to continue defending you to those who think you are a pump-and-dump, con-artist if you burn out on Steemit too. Fool me once, and all that jazz.
PS – I feel like I have a lot more things to say, mostly positive, but this is already too long for a comment. I would treat the posts that say "suck it up" with a large grain of salt. More to say on that too, for important reasons, as that is not an effective coping strategy. I'm experiencing some of the same feelings you are, as I am putting in about 6 hours a day on Steemit too, along with my full-time and part-time jobs. I would be happy to chat with you more privately. You seem like a guy who could really use a night out bowling or mini-golfing or something, and I'm like 10 minutes away from you. Seriously. Just sayin'.
Exactly the help I wax looking for thank you very much! I read the whole comment voted it to the top and will be applying several of your suggestions going forward!
Thank you for the reply Jerry, I know you're quite busy.
Hope to see you in a few weeks!