Many times blocking method calls might cause problems in your applications.
If the code is waiting for some resource availablity and you cannot specify a timeout option...well you're stuck!

You might have seen this with javax.jms.Connection, you try to open a connection when the network is down and your application freezes. No exceptions or anything telling you what's wrong.

Using the the java.util.concurrent api you can run the problematic code in a separate thread and wait for the completion or timeout of this execution.

Here is some code calling a jms connection factory in a separate thread.

private Connection getConnection() throws NamingException, JMSException {
 FutureTask<Connection> createConnectionTask = null;
 try {
  createConnectionTask = new FutureTask<Connection>(new Callable<Connection>() {
   @Override
   public Connection call() throws Exception {
    logger.debug("Calling connection on the connection factory");
    Connection connection = (Connection) connectionFactory.createConnection();
    return connection;
   }
  });
  // start task in a new thread
  new Thread(createConnectionTask).start();
 
  logger.debug(String.format("Wait for the execution of createConnection to finish, timeout after %d ms", CONNECTION_TIME_OUT));
  connection = createConnectionTask.get(CONNECTION_TIME_OUT, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
 } catch (TimeoutException e) {
  JMSException jmsException = new JMSException(e.getMessage());
  jmsException.setLinkedException(e);
  throw jmsException;
 }
 return connection;
}

The main thread will create a java.util.concurrent.FutureTask that returns the connection you need.
It'll wait a maximum of CONNECTION_TIME_OUT milliseconds before throwing a TimeoutException. This way you can have complete control of your code execution! 

From http://www.devinprogress.info/2011/03/run-tasks-in-parallel-and-set-your-own.html