I hopped on the Getting Things Done bandwagon when it premiered more than 20 years ago. It worked well for me until technology changed, and most of the concepts became obsolete. But I hung onto the Someday/Maybe list: a place where I can dump things I may want or will do someday. Today I am announcing the death of my someday/maybe list. It no longer serves me, and I have moved to something much better.
The Someday/Maybe List, Original Version
According to the Getting Things Done website: “Someday/Maybe means you are not currently committed to complete it, but you are committed to track it as an item to periodically review for future action.”
Anything that you want to do in the future goes on this list. It’s not about quality, it’s about getting it out of your head.
You could have entries like “Climb Mt. Kilamanjaro”, “Replace the light switches with nicer plates” and “Buy better sticky notes for the office”. Very different scopes, very different levels of effort, and honestly, very different levels of commitment.
In GTD, you process the place where all your stuff ends up (an inbox). Then you decide if you are going to do it now, put it into your active pile of work, or put it in the someday/maybe list. It’s a great way to process a bunch of tasks.
During the weekly review, you look at the Someday/Maybe list and pull items into your active pile of work.
It sounds very neat, doesn’t it?
My Experience With The Someday/Maybe List
I had a someday/maybe list from the publication of GTD all the way until the middle of 2025. In the first couple of years, the list wasn’t too bad. But I could also count on one hand the number of things that moved from the someday/maybe list to the active projects.
It reminds me of the question: “Is Hell exothermic or endothermic?”
Every time I put something on the someday/maybe list and didn’t pull something out, I was conscious of the fact that I was adding more stuff – and the pressure started building to do something about it.
There were at least five times during that 20+ year span where I cleaned out the someday/maybe list. It never got to empty, and it built again at a rapid rate.
I moved it from a text file, to Remember The Milk, to Trello. Change of tools didn’t help.
My weekly review got longer and longer as the list grew, which meant that most weeks I skipped looking at it.
Analyzing the Problems With the Someday/Maybe List
There are three main problems I struggled with:
1. Too much clutter
Since I work with data, I know that if you put things into a database and never take them out, there is no point in putting the data in.
Adding large quantities of things to a single list makes it almost impossible to see what is in there. The sheer volume of tasks (the worst as over 800 items in my list) meant that I couldn’t find things. Even if I knew something was in the list and wanted to move it to the active projects, there was little chance I could find it.
2. Lack of Review
In GTD, each week during the weekly review you look at your someday/maybe and decide if each item still belongs there. The choices are leave it on the list, move it to active projects or delete it.
This is fine if you have a small list (say less than 50 items) when you get over 100, you are looking at major time commitments to review the whole list.
I moved from weekly to quarterly reviews. It didn’t help. Then I just started skipping the review altogether, promising that I would get it done when I had time (like I had time!)
3. No movement
Even when I was reviewing things on the list, I wasn’t moving them to active. Part of the reason is I knew I would get to them “someday”.
What often happened is that things I knew needed to be done by a certain date were left on the active project list, cluttering that up. I knew that if I put them in the someday/maybe I would not find them again to do them on time.
My Someday/Maybe Redo In Process
A few years ago I moved my entire someday/maybe out of Remember The Milk to Trello. I did it using an automation from IFTTT, because there was no way on earth I was going to retype 476 items.
I started with one board called Projects. I had a column for an Inbox, a column for Not Started, a column for In Progress, and a column for Completed. I labeled each of my items with a general category: e.g. blog, health, writing, church, household, etc.
This gave me a way to see all the tasks associated with a given label – I could filter them down so I could see all the blog tasks, for instance.
Next, I actively limited my In Progress board to have 10 items. This meant that I would not be starting new things before finishing others.
I also implemented an IFTTT rule that when I moved something to In Progress it automatically creates a project task in RTM.
This went on well for about a year, and I decided that it needed more work.
My Current Someday/Maybe Process In Trello
I have a lot of craft and writing tasks in the backlog. I keep them there because when I have already purchased materials and have a pattern, I need to have a quick way to pick the next project. But these were cluttering up my lists. I moved the craft and writing tasks to a separate board. It has two columns: Crafts and Writing. They get copied over to the Project board when I start them. Crafts currently has 23 items and writing has 12.
I also created a board for Blog items. There are three columns: Inbox, Maybe, Backlog. Backlog contains things that I definitely need to do, like correcting spelling errors and redoing free products. Maybe contains things that caught my interest during reading, and I need to consider further before committing. Once I have decided to do one of the blog items, it gets copied over the project board. The current item count in Backlog is 10, and the Maybe is 18.
In both of these cases, I limit myself to one project: one craft, one writing, one blog.
My Current Project Board
I expanded my project board to have a Backlog column. The difference between Backlog and Not Started is that every item in the Not Started has a start date. This removes the issue of missing start dates. I use built-in Trello functionality to move the item from Not Started to In Progress when the start date rolls around.
The Backlog column is for things that I have committed to do but I don’t have a timeframe. This is a small list, and gets reviewed once a month.
My Current Process
Once a week, during my weekly planning session, I open up Trello.
- I move projects from In Progress to Completed as necessary
- If I completed a blog, craft or writing project, I pick one of those from their respective lists and move them to Projects
- I process my Inbox. I label everything. If it is something that I have a time frame for, I set the start date. (Internal Trello programming triggers on this and moves the task to Not Started).
- I then move items to the backlog, or delete them.
Because of the automation provided by IFTTT, I don’t have to worry about things moving between systems. As soon as something gets moved to In Progress, the task shows up in my day-to-day task manager, Remember The Milk.
During my monthly review, I go through all the lists in all three boards. Anything is removable.
In Conclusion
Allowing the death of my someday/maybe list and moving it into Trello with automation has allowed me to get a handle on things that I want to do. I can locate things, review the small amount of items, and automatically have things move to my project list. I don’t miss the someday/maybe, and I hope it rests in peace.
