Hi there people who are in the postdoctoral stage

Is it wise to limit the number of grants you apply for in case by some freak occurrence you are awarded more than one grant or more than you can take on? Or is it better to just go for anything you can since it is so competitive that the former is not really going to happen?

Thanks!

Personally I am applying for some grants to extend my postdoc. My boss will only let me apply for one at a time. Some funding are like papers and don't like your proposal to be under consideration elsewhere.
His view is that it would look quite bad to apply for two grants, get both and have to turn one down.
I made a list of the ones I wanted to apply to, when the application open and close. I have downloaded the templates and slowly working through them. I presume if your applying for a postdoc you will need a PI support ask them how they feel. Also, look at your uni guidelines, in mine, they have to approve all grant applications and arent ken on people applying with the same proposal over and over again, I have to change them up.

Thank you Nead :)

Depending on what you are applying for, there may also be processes of demand management i.e. the funder or the university restricts the numbers allowed to apply from the institution. In those cases you need to look out for internal competition deadlines weeks before the actual deadline. Either your PI or your departmental research administrator should be able to tell you whether that's something you need to copy in.

It is better than have too much funding than not enough. You can turn down funding and even if it looks bad you will still have funding instead of no funding at all.

Yes, that's what I thought. But I'll have to check more as I wouldn't want to if it looked bad (assuming I actually was in such a scenario). Also people do have multiple grants on the go. Maybe one could be deferred if it came to it. Or both projected carried out simultaneously but over a longer period of time. Thanks all for your input.