It's a recursive query, but it's basically the simplest recursive query. It's not that bad. WITH recursive_traversal(depth, id) AS ( -- base case: the

It's a recursive query, but it's basically the simplest recursive query. It's not that bad. WITH recursive_traversal(depth, id) AS ( -- base case: the root has no previous SELECT 0, id FROM todo WHERE previous IS NULL AND user_id = $1 UNION ALL -- recursive case: traverse to next row SELECT depth + 1, todo.id FROM todo JOIN recursive_traversal r ON r.next = todo.id WHERE depth < $2 ) -- we only accumulated the ids, so join one more time to get the rest of the columns SELECT todo.* FROM todo JOIN recursive_traversal USING (id);