Someday / maybe, or how to say no without losing it
You have an idea you are not going to do this year. You know it. You still carry it around, half-open, because deleting it feels like a verdict on the idea, and you are not ready to give one.
That unresolved half-state is expensive. It is why your project list has eleven things on it and four are real, and why looking at the list is tiring instead of useful.
Someday / maybe is the trick that makes saying no cheap: nothing is thrown away, it is parked. You are not deciding the idea is bad. You are deciding it is not now, which is a much smaller decision and therefore one you can actually make.
The list, with the dates that make it honest
One line per idea, and a note with two dates: when you parked it, and when you last looked at it.
Those dates are the whole difference between a Someday list and a drawer. "Parked 12 Jan, looked at 04 Aug, still no" is a decision you have now made twice, on the record. The third time you see it, deleting it is easy, because the list itself is telling you what you already believe.
The monthly look, and its one rule
Once a month, read the list slowly. Then:
- promote at most one thing to a real project;
- delete anything you have said no to three times;
- date everything else you read.
At most one is the rule that matters. A Someday review that promotes four things is not a review, it is a relapse, and next month your project list is the same overloaded list you were trying to fix.
Why it belongs in the same tree
Because promoting is a drag, not a re-entry. The idea becomes a project bullet where its children can be next actions, and its parked note stays as the record of how long it waited. And because demoting works the same way: a project that stalls for two months goes back to Someday with a date, which is a far more honest outcome than letting it rot at the bottom of Projects looking active.
That two-way motion is the reason this list works in an outline and dies in a task app: in most tools a project and an idea are different KINDS of object, so moving between them is a conversion, and conversions do not get done.
What an agent should and should not do here
It can date the list for you, count how often something has been read without moving, and say the useful sentence out loud: "you have looked at this four times since January and never promoted it."
It should not propose what to promote. Someday lists are where your taste lives, and taste is not a thing to hand over.
Take the list
Open the template, press "Show in my Pando", and move three things off your project list onto it tonight. Your project list will be shorter and truer in one minute.