Online Tool Store
· 5 min read
How to Park an Idea Without Losing It
Manesh Jayawardhana
CIO & Co-founder
An idea arrives at an inconvenient moment. You are not going to act on it, and you do not want to lose it, so you add it to your to-do list.
It is now sitting alongside things you have actually committed to, making the list longer and every glance at it slightly worse.
Commitments and possibilities need separating
A to-do list is a set of commitments. Everything on it is something you intend to do, and its length is a measure of what you owe.
A someday list is a set of possibilities. Nothing on it is committed, its length means nothing, and it can be as long as you like without any weight attached.
Mixing them damages both. The to-do list becomes impossible and stops being trusted, which is fatal — a list you do not trust is a list you stop consulting. And the possibilities become quiet reproaches, since anything on a to-do list you are not doing reads as a failure.
Two lists, clearly separated, is the whole mechanism. The someday list is somewhere you can put things precisely because nothing on it is owed.
Capture is the point
Ideas resurface whether or not they are recorded, and an unrecorded idea resurfaces at the worst moment — usually mid-task, as an interruption.
Writing it down with a review date is what lets you stop thinking about it. The thought “I must remember this” is what keeps returning, and it stops once you can point at where the thing is written.
That is why the capture step needs to be nearly frictionless. An idea that takes two minutes to file properly will not be filed, and the value is entirely in the filing happening.
Review dates turn a list into a system
A someday list without review dates is a place ideas go to be forgotten, which is only marginally better than not writing them down.
Attaching a date — one month, three months, a year — means each item resurfaces deliberately rather than randomly. The review is a decision point with three options:
Promote it. It is now something you will do. Move it to the actual list.
Defer it again. Still interesting, still not now. New review date.
Delete it. No longer interesting.
Most items get deferred once and then either promoted or deleted. That is a healthy list.
| Deferrals | What it means |
|---|---|
| 0-1 | Normal |
| 2 | Still deciding |
| 3+ | Delete it — you are not doing this |
Delete on the third deferral
The rule that keeps the list useful.
An item deferred three times has been considered three times and rejected three times. It is not something you are going to do, and keeping it makes every future review longer and slightly more dispiriting.
Deleting it is not a loss. If it genuinely matters, it will come back — that is how it got on the list in the first place. And if it does not come back, it was never going to happen.
A someday list of forty items you review in five minutes is useful. One of four hundred is an archive nobody opens.
Capture everywhere, review in one place
A distinction that makes the system survive contact with real life.
Capture has to work wherever the idea arrives — walking, in a meeting, half asleep. That means whatever is fastest to hand: a phone note, a voice memo, a scrap of paper. Fighting to file something properly at the moment of capture means it does not get captured.
Review happens in one place, on a schedule. Everything captured anywhere gets processed into the list, with a review date, and the capture points are emptied.
The failure mode is treating capture points as the list. Six half-full notes apps and a drawer of paper is not a someday list; it is six places to feel guilty about. The processing step is what turns capture into a system.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Keeping possibilities on the to-do list.
- Capturing with no review date, so items are effectively lost.
- Never deleting anything, so the list becomes unreviewable.
- Reviewing so often that nothing has changed between reviews.
- Making capture so structured that ideas do not get captured.
How to do it with Someday/Maybe List Manager
The Someday/Maybe List Manager keeps the list and the review dates in your browser.
- Add anything you might want to do, with a review date.
- Keep it strictly separate from your committed tasks.
- At review, promote, defer or delete — those are the only three options.
- Delete anything deferred three times.
Other productivity tools are in the tools directory.
Frequently asked questions
Why keep a someday list at all?
Because ideas resurface whether or not you record them, and an unrecorded one interrupts at the worst moment. Writing it down with a review date is what lets you stop holding it.
What if an item keeps getting deferred?
Delete it. Three deferrals is a clear answer. If it genuinely matters it will come back, and if it does not, it was never going to happen.
How is this different from a to-do list?
A to-do list is commitments; a someday list is possibilities. Mixing them makes the to-do list untrustworthy and the possibilities feel like failures.
Final thought
Put a review date on everything and delete on the third deferral. Without both, a someday list is just a longer to-do list with worse feelings attached.