Someday/Maybe And 101 In 1001

October 30th 2006

GTD

The description of someday/maybe as taken from Wikipedia:

“Things that you want to do at some point, but not right now. Examples might be ‘learn Chinese’, or ‘take diving holiday’.”

I use someday/maybe as a list of those general tasks, which differ from my normal to do lists in that have no specific timescale or importance tied to them. One such example I have at the moment is to redesign this blog. I haven’t tied any priority to doing it. I may end up deciding to do it next week should I have time and basically feel like it, but I could also equally not consider doing it for the next six months. Either way, I keep it on my someday/maybe list as a sort of gentle reminder at the back of my mind to occasionally think about it. I like to refer and update the list every month or so and ask myself if the task is still relevant or not. I could decide that this current design is acceptable and scrap any ideas, however vague they may be, of redesigning it and remove it from the list.

Ok, so you are probably asking how this differs from normal implementation. The key things I don’t include in my someday/maybe list are actually stuff like what was quoted in the Wikipedia article above. Learning Chinese or going on a diving holiday are big deals. They are in essence self improvement goals or huge experiences, removed from any day to day business, home or financial tasks that I would add to my normal lists or someday/maybe lists. And this is where 101 in 1001 fits in.

It’s something I came across a few months back now and it really appealed to me because it provided some form of focus to these big deals, these things that I’ve always wanted to do but never got round to. Sure I could have added them to my normal to-do lists but as they were getting mixed up with day to day tasks they lost some of their relevancy. Plus, it provides a great timescale of 1001 days which is a much more realistic target for these long term goals. If you think it’s satisfying to tick off a task on a normal list, imagine how satisfying ticking off a task on one of these 101 lists is and to see that list of all those big things you have always wanted to do get slowly completed.

I won’t put my own list up as its rather personal to me. However there are certainly lots of sites out there that discuss their progress on 101 In 1001 so just check out some Google results for examples.