Weekly Review and the Dining Philosophers

[craigm]

While in the midst of a weekly review, I had a thought which just popped out at me about my weekly review. I was going through my list of projects, and thought to myself: "Wow... isn't it great that I didn't let that thing slip too far, or I probably would have forgotten about it". Then I remembered a computer science parallel processing puzzle taught to me in college. It's called the Dining Philosophers. The problem, briefly, describes five philosophers around a table with five bowls, five eating utensils (forks or chopsticks), and a large bowl of rice. The philosophers must have two eating utensils in order to get rice from the bowl, and to eat. The puzzle is in coming up with an angorithm for the philosophers to gather the utensils, eat, and release. If the philosphers all grab a utensil at their left, they'll wait a long time to get the second utensil, and all will starve. In the same way, the weekly review to me is like this problem. All of these ideas want attention in my head, but there's only so much processing time in there for any one of them. But with the review, I can list all of my projects in turn, give them their utensils to do whatever eating they require in my head, and then leave them in peace to... well... philosophize!

Anyone else have this kind of revelation with their weekly reviews?