Someday/maybe
A someday/maybe list holds the things you might do one day but have not committed to yet — so they are captured, out of the way, and reviewed on purpose rather than glimpsed daily.
By Bohdan StefaniukLast updated
Where the term comes from
It is David Allen’s, from Getting Things Done, and it solves a specific problem: an idea you are not acting on still takes up room in your head until it is written down somewhere you trust. The list exists so that capturing something is not the same as committing to it.
A place, or a label
This is the distinction that decides whether the list works. In most apps “someday” is a tag or a filter, which means the item is still sitting in its project, still in the count, still catching your eye. Deferring it changed a label and not your experience.
When it is a place, moving something there takes it out of the project. Things 3 does it this way — Cultured Code write that items in Someday “will not show up in Anytime or Upcoming” — and so does TaskPocket, where Someday is one of three locations a task can be in rather than something it is marked with. See projects and areas.
Why it goes stale
A someday list nobody reads becomes a graveyard, and then a source of guilt. Allen’s answer is the weekly review, where step 10 is to look at it and ask what is ready to become real and what can honestly be deleted. Deleting things from it is a feature, not a failure.