---
title: "Someday/maybe list"
description: "A holding place for things you might do but have not committed to. The point is that it leaves your active lists entirely, rather than sitting there tagged."
canonical: https://taskpocket.io/glossary/someday-maybe/
lastUpdated: 2026-09-01
---
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2. [Glossary](https://taskpocket.io/glossary/)
3. Someday/maybe

# 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 Stefaniuk](https://taskpocket.io/about/) Last updated 2026-09-01

## 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](https://taskpocket.io/features/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](https://taskpocket.io/guides/gtd-weekly-review-checklist/), 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.

## Sources

1. [Getting Things Done — the Weekly Review, which is where a someday/maybe list gets read](https://gettingthingsdone.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Weekly_Review_Checklist.pdf) checked 2026-09-01
2. [Cultured Code — Someday in Things 3, an example of it being a list rather than a tag](https://culturedcode.com/things/support/articles/4001304/) checked 2026-09-01

## Related reading

- [Projects and areas — things that end, and things that do not](https://taskpocket.io/features/projects-and-areas/) — A project is something you finish. An area is something you keep doing. How the two work in TaskPocket, what the free plan allows, and how other apps model it.
- [The GTD weekly review checklist](https://taskpocket.io/guides/gtd-weekly-review-checklist/) — All eleven steps of David Allen’s weekly review, in order, with what each one is actually for and where people give up. Works with any app, or none.
- [Weekly review](https://taskpocket.io/glossary/weekly-review/) — Bringing a task system back in line with reality — about an hour, roughly weekly. What makes the rest of the method work, and the first thing people drop.