You have to set up the queue driver you want to use in your project’s root dir’s .env file.
By default, the queue driver is sync which does exactly what you are describing, executing queues immediately.
You can choose of some different queue drivers, such as beanstalked or redis (which would be my choice). There’s an excellent freebie on laracasts.com about setting up a beanstalked queue.
To view all available queue driver options in Laravel, have a look here.
Here’s a .env example
APP_ENV=local
APP_DEBUG=true
APP_KEY=SomeRandomString
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_DATABASE=homestead
DB_USERNAME=homestead
DB_PASSWORD=secret
CACHE_DRIVER=file
SESSION_DRIVER=file
QUEUE_DRIVER=sync // <-- Put the desired driver here
MAIL_DRIVER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=mailtrap.io
MAIL_PORT=2525
MAIL_USERNAME=null
MAIL_PASSWORD=null
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=null