Keep Getting Things Done – Slow Down the Queuing!

By John Brougher

We’re pretty awesome people.

And though working at home can be tough sometimes, with the distractions of family, TV, and the Internet pulling us away from our work, it’s definitely worth it. There’s one distraction in particular that I’ll focus on that takes away so much productivity, yet does so in an incredibly stealthy way. It’s something I call “queuing,” and I’m sure you’ve seen it before.

Queuing occurs when we flag something for later and never get around to doing it. This is different, of course, from deferring (or, you might say, “positive queuing”) tasks to a later point. Queuing is negative and refers to things that take up time and cause worry but don’t actually create value down the line. Some examples from my life (that apply to all of us) will shed some light on this painful topic.

• Music queuing. Music queuing occurs all the time. We buy a bunch of CDs and resolve to listen to them later, only to never do so. This effect is amplified if we buy audiobooks or more expensive audio offerings. If you’re a podcast junkie like me, you can do the same thing with podcasts: go to the iTunes Store, realize that there are all these great podcasts, and download 10-20 to review at some point. The problem with this strategy is that a mounting to-listen list only makes the chances of actual listening smaller. In the meantime, our iTunes library is filled with tracks that we wait to listen to until “a good time” rolls around.

  Note that this unfortunate phenomenon, of course, occurs as well with books and other media beyond music.

• Game queuing. I was a semi-professional game queuer for the longest time. As a lover of video and computer games, I would often see something in a store for a “low price” and get it, knowing that I would enjoy playing it later and thank myself for getting such a great deal. Time after time, I would end up eBaying the game for substantially less money than I paid for it or, worse still, devote significant time to the game before realizing that it just wasn’t for me. These were highly-rated games that I had heard a great deal about, and so I snapped them up. A serious look at my game collection would reveal, however, that I still had plenty of unplayed games left to go and a myriad of other fun activities to pursue. Why make a gaming to-do list? Why make gaming into work?
• Internet queuing. This one’s the big kahuna of queuing: Internet queuing. For me, this unfortunate syndrome manifested itself as bookmarks—I would bookmark a series of sites that I would, I told myself naively, look at later, and gain exponential amounts of knowledge and insight into topics that would catapult me to fame and fortune. By the end of a queuing spree, though, the only thing I had in abundance was entries on my bookmarks menu. I also utilized Firefox’s ability to save the tabs I had open, but this just led to having far too many tabs open at a time (thus making Firefox hoard RAM desperately) and some needless acrobatics to ensure that I would only close Firefox when absolutely necessary. It became like some strange geek obsession without an actual purpose.

But wait, some say—John, it doesn’t seem like the downside is too bad. What harm does queuing do beyond some mild distraction? At least the links/books/media/games I want/need will be available. On some level, that’s true. If the only casualty of queuing is a minor bit of distraction, then I’m all for it. In my experience, however, the opposite is the case. On paper, it’s just mild distraction, but in reality, the queuing distracts from the truly important things that need to get done. Furthermore, many of the things we queue require significant research and investment. How long does it take to figure out if a new media library site is a good one? It might take hours to test and probe what kind of stock images/music/movies it has, what quality, etc. I know that I could’ve spent days going through my queue without actually removing items—the only way to remove some of the items would be to buy something (I’d bookmark a cool third-party application, for example) or to explore it. Buying everything one queues would quickly bankrupt even the most shrewd freelancer, and exploring every neat site and book would require multiple lifetimes.

Well John, one might also say, it’s all well and good to warn against queuing, but what’s the alternative? Well, there’s three quick and easy strategies that we can employ to make sure our productivity doesn’t dip because of our negative queuing.

• Make the queue a temporary place, and set aside time to empty it occasionally. Much like many GTD specialists urge us to consider our inbox as a temporary holdover, make the queue a temporary place. Don’t let bookmarks fill up, or the pile of CDs you have to listen to grow taller than you. Set aside time, at least once a week (depending on how queue-happy you are), to go through your queue and move the items to an appropriate location and discard the items that aren’t useful. This should be a nice big chunk of time—it’s important.
• Shop smarter. As hard as it is for us to remember, always question our purchase motives. If we’re buying something because it’s cheap, or to satisfy a quota (whether it’s free shipping for $25 at Amazon or to get a reward from a reward credit card), really consider what effect the buy will have. Will it create a distraction, or will it concretely improve a part of our lives? Did we want the item before we saw the ad or knew about the sale? Asking questions and waiting can save many a dime (and much wasted productivity).
• Throw in the towel. Often. I’m not counseling a “give up” strategy, but don’t be afraid to move on to the next item in the queue. If you’re playing a video game and it’s not entertaining, regardless of the rating it achieved on Gamespot or how much your friends like it, you’ll probably save time and happiness by not playing any longer. At the end of the day, playing an unfun game for an hour longer to “see if it gets better” will be just another hour that couldn’t be spent on truly fun activities.

What about you, readers? What strategies do you employ to make sure you don’t podcast binge, or get stuck with a menu full of bookmarks?

John Brougher is a freelance technology speaker/trainer and consultant based in Providence, RI. His consulting business lives at johnbrougher.com, and he runs a technology blog at techsumer.net. He loves hearing from readers, so please feel free to give him a shout at john@johnbrougher.com.