An In-Progress Problem

I was watching a video clip of Ken Schwaber talking about scrum software development, and he got into an interesting problem. (Well, interesting to some of us.) This was the "in-progress problem." It arises when you find that you have many tasks started, but few or none of them are being brought to a conclusion.

For the rest of my comments on this problem, as it relates to my reading list, go here.

This takes one in a rather different direction than Mortimer Adler's classic How to Read a Book. I don't think it ever occurred to Adler to provide instructions on how to read fifteen books at one time. Is that because Adler was so systematic that he read only one book at a time? I find that hard to believe. I think all of us like some variety, and what we're reading in the daytime in pursuit of some project may not be what we want to read before going to bed.

I think I got into the habit of having a number of books underway at one time in college, when I was reading textbooks, and other works, for a number of courses at once. I had to have several books going in parallel.

I'd be interested in hearing about other people's experiences and approaches to this reading in-progress problem.