Crazy for Queues: A Simple Hack for Complicated Schedules
Friday, February 29, 2008 by HackCollege The following is a guest post from our friend Cal Newport from his Study Hacks blog. We've also sent one of our own guest posts over there: Implement a Mechanism-based Lifestyle
Project Paralysis
The scenario is common. As the semester progresses, long-term projects began to pile up. A research paper for your history class. A big programming project for computer science. The articles you promised the school newspaper.
This mess of deadlines soon becomes too intricate to decode. It's too much to handle. You freeze, and then end up scrambling, right before the deadlines, again and again, pumping your stress to dangerous pressures while handing in dangerously shitty work.
To many this is just college. Stretches of drunken stupidity followed by bursts of stressed out chaos. But it doesn't have to be this way. There's no magic solution: hard work is hard work. But one simple hack can make a big difference...
The Tale of Two Tasks
Let's start with the basics. There are two types of academic tasks: small and urgent, and big and long-term. The former is the grunt work due every week: problem sets, reading assignments, little essays. These tasks tend to fall into a routine. You get used to accomplishing them.
Big and long-term tasks, like writing a large paper, on the other hand, have no routine. When many pile up they begin to conflict, and it becomes hard to make real progress on any. The task is to monumental.
Enter my secret weapon...
The Project Queue
The most important document on my desktop is called Project Queues. Inside, I have two columns: one for my work as a graduate student and one for my work as a writer. In each column I list the next major step of all the big and long-term projects on my plate. Roughly speaking, I add new projects to the bottom of the list, but I am open to messing around with the sorting to make sure that the higher on the list the more important the project.
So far, so good. But here's the crucial part: I have to finish the task on the top of the list before I am allowed to move on to the next. Furthermore, I review the queues almost every day. I'm never at a lost to know what is next for me to accomplish. No matter how much I procrastinate, the reality of the list doesn't change. That next horrible, loathsome chunk of work is staring back. It's not going anywhere. It has to get done.
The effect: I focus down and get things done. I may not like that top task. I may hate it, in fact. But I can't get to the other urgent tasks below until I finish it, so I keep pushing. And you know what? Once you get going, it's not all that bad.
Why This Works
Without the queue, my attention is disperse. I tend to work on the long-term projects that catch my interest at the moment, or put them all off all together. The queue focuses my energy. It says: you can't just work, you have to *finish* things. And you have to be continually finishing things. If the queue is not advancing, you are not doing what you need to be doing. It's a simple structure, but it brings every thing that is important into focus.
Try it.You might be surprised how much more drunken stupidity you can weave into your life once the bursts of stressed chaos are removed.
Reader Comments (10)
[...] written by our good (and much cooler) friends over at Hack College. If you’re so inclined, check out the article I wrote for them: how I use “project queues” to stay focused. I think we can all agree: Nothing says [...]
I like the idea, but I'm having a hard time visualizing what a project queue looks like. Could you upload a sample queue or a screenshot?
I was thinking the same thing, we could do with a visual aid!
Here's a snapshot of the first few entries on my writer's queue:
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[ ] blog theme overhaul
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[ ] finish interviews; submit draft of Flak article
[ ] McSweeney's submission
[ ] next round of interviews for TSC project
...
I'm still not sure how this is different from a "Projects" list and a "Next Actions" list.
@Jessica - My two cents on the difference is this: A "projects" list and a "next-action" list have the ability to track of the same items as the queue, however, on a day-to-day basis, you still have to make the decision on where to focus your energy. I know if the next action for a specific project is something I perceive as distateful, then I will put it off until they become an emergency and instead do the next actions that are more interesting to me.
By forming your next-actions for each project into the proposed project queue, you keep yourself from having to make the day-to-day decisions about what to do next (because you just start on the next task for project 1, then go on to next task for project 2, and keep adding the new next tasks to the bottom of the queue) and it keeps you from neglecting projects until they become an emergency.
That's how I see it, but I'd love to hear someone else's thoughts.
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@Valery:
You're right on! A project queue is not a full list of all the next actions. It's an *ordered* list of the next major project chunks you need to get done. You don't choose which of these to do next -- you complete them in the order presented.
Most of the tasks on your plate are still captured and dealt with in the standard next actions list style.
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I can see the logic behind it, but I don't think it's something that I would be able to utilize. Still though, something I would pass along.
I have one question though. Let's say that you don't do what's on top and the work becomes overdue. Would you still finish that task before anything else or would you move it down the list so that something else doesn't also become overdue?