The tandem jump sat on my list for a year and a half

During a break in a training, someone told me I absolutely had to do a tandem paragliding jump, that it was the best thing ever. I found the idea middling. I wrote it down anyway, and it landed on my someday/maybe list.

It sat there for a year and a half. I saw it every month, thought about it briefly every time, and every time left it standing. Until the month the thought came: either I delete this now, or I do it.

I made a project out of it. It was called “complete a tandem jump without booking a course”, because I know myself. Five minutes after the first step I was on a flight school’s website looking at the advanced course for cross-border flights, about to book it. I just about managed to turn around. On the first attempt I then waited four hours for wind and drove home empty-handed; two weeks later it worked.

This is not a story about parachutes. It is one about a list doing exactly what it was built for.

What the list exists for

It keeps capturing cheap.

If every idea you wrote down were a commitment, you would eventually stop writing ideas down. And that is precisely what happens. I regularly heard sentences in coaching like: I inwardly refuse to write down any more, because then I have to process and push all of it forward too.

That is economising at the wrong end. Capturing has to remain the simplest action in the whole system, because everything else builds on it. Stop collecting and you no longer have a complete picture, and your head notices immediately and takes over again itself.

The someday/maybe list is the place where an idea is allowed to exist without you committing to it. That is its entire purpose, and it is a bigger one than it sounds.

What separates it from an idea graveyard

The term came from one of our sessions, a participant used it, and it describes the risk exactly: a list where things land and are never looked at again. If that is the case, you might as well print it out and throw it away. The effect is the same.

The difference between a working list and a graveyard consists of exactly one thing: an appointment.

I go through mine once a month. Not thoroughly, I fly over it. For each item there are three options: delete, leave standing, activate. For me that takes a few minutes. Where this pass sits in the larger process is in the weekly review.

Some people deliberately put creative time in the calendar for it, which I think is good, because then the pass does not look like system maintenance but like what it is: the only occasion on which you occupy yourself with things nobody is asking of you.

The guilty conscience about leaving things standing

This part took me a long time to learn. If I fly over the list and leave an item untouched, I do not need a guilty conscience about it.

For a long time I had one. These are unfinished things, I thought, and every time I read past them there was that small tug. This is exactly the point at which most people give the list up, because a monthly appointment with a guilty conscience does not become a habit.

The mistake is in the category. An item on someday/maybe is not an unfinished task. It is an option. And you are allowed to decline options month after month without it becoming a failure. With the tandem jump it was eighteen times.

What belongs on the list

Three different kinds, which often get mixed up.

Genuine someday ideas. The language course, the trip, the book project, the tandem jump. Things you might want, but not now.

Dormant projects. Undertakings that have begun or are pending, but where nothing has moved for weeks and nothing will move in the next four or five either. They do not belong on the active project list, where they trigger an individual review with a guilty conscience every week. With forty active projects that is typically ten to fifteen of them.

Everything where nothing happens if you forget it. The criterion comes from a participant and is the most usable one I know. If you leave the house tomorrow and forget the thing, nothing happens. It should still be written down somewhere. That is exactly what the list is for.

The backlog as an intermediate stage

Many people use someday/maybe exclusively for private ideas, holiday dreams and things that are fun. If you then put a dormant company project on the same list, it feels wrong, and the list loses its character.

The solution some have built: a third list between active projects and someday/maybe. From programmer jargon, the name backlog has established itself for it. That is where projects sit that are real and will run at some point, but are currently dormant. Not dreams, just paused.

Whether you need it depends on how your someday/maybe list feels. If you hesitate to put a project on it, you need one. Which lists otherwise belong in the set is in GTD lists: the ones you actually need.

Secure the next step when you move a project

A practical detail that often gets overlooked and saves time on reactivation.

When a project leaves the active area, its next step gets deleted from the context list. It should not show up there any more, otherwise the move has no effect.

But do not delete it without replacement. Write it into the project’s support material, into the note, into the Trello card, wherever the project keeps its filing. Then later it says there: this was the state, this is what I wanted to do next.

When you reactivate the project in eight months you will want to think it through afresh anyway. But you start from a point where somebody has already done some thinking — namely you.

Deliberate deletion is not failure

On the last pass I deleted two items. They had been sitting there for three weeks, they had mattered to me at the start, and looking at them it became clear: I did not get to them because other things were more important, and that will stay that way for the next five weeks. So, gone.

The decisive part of this is not the deletion. It is that the things sat there for three weeks and I had the chance every time to decide whether I wanted them. That is the difference between a conscious decline and forgetting.

Forgotten things come back, mostly at night. Declined ones do not.

The list as permission

A benefit I had not had on my radar before, and which came out of the same group.

One participant described how she tends not to do things for herself. The opportunity is there, and then comes the reflex: oh no, better not, too expensive, over the top, I do not need it.

What makes the difference for her is the fact that the thing is on her someday/maybe list. She can then argue with herself: I have thought about this before. It mattered enough to be written down. So I am doing it now.

The list is thereby not just a filing place but a permission you granted yourself at a moment when you were clearer than you are in the moment you hesitate. That is a good reason to keep one, even if not a single item on it ever gets activated.

Where it typically fails

• No pass. Without a fixed appointment it is a graveyard, and within a few weeks your head entrusts nothing to it any more.
• The list becomes a second inbox. Push everything unclear onto it instead of clarifying it and you have merely renamed the inbox. What goes on the list is what has been decided, namely: not now.
• Too many categories. Set up six different maybe-lists and you go through none of them. One, at most two with a backlog alongside.
• Everything sits there forever. If you have deleted nothing and activated nothing for a year, the pass has become a formality. Two items per pass where a decision genuinely falls are enough as a sign of life.

Common questions

What belongs on a someday/maybe list?

Ideas you might want to realise at some point, projects that are real but currently dormant, and everything where nothing happens if you forget it but which should still be written down somewhere.

How often should I go through the someday/maybe list?

Once a month is enough, as a skim with three possible decisions per item: delete, leave standing, activate. Without that fixed appointment the list becomes an idea graveyard that nobody entrusts anything to any more.

What is the difference between someday/maybe and a backlog?

Someday/maybe holds options without commitment, often private and idea-like. A backlog contains real but paused projects. The separation is worth it if you hesitate to put a company project on the same list as a holiday idea.

Should I feel guilty if things sit there for years?

No. An item on this list is not an unfinished task but an option you decline regularly. One undertaking sat on mine for a year and a half until the right moment came.

What happens to the next step when a project moves to someday/maybe?

Delete it from the context list, otherwise the move has no effect. But note it in the project’s support material first, so that the last state of thinking is available on reactivation.

---

Open your someday/maybe list and check when you last deleted or activated an item. If you cannot find one, you are not keeping a valve, you are keeping an archive.

If your lists jam in several places at once, it pays to look at the whole rather than at one list. That is sparring. Write to me if you want to sort it out once.