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May 25, 2006

Someday maybe...

I first heard about having a list of things to do "Someday/Maybe" when I was about 10 years old. You can imagine the fantastic and wild ideas that came bubbling out of me as soon as I heard that I was "allowed" to think about all the wonderful things I could do, be, and invent in the adult life ahead of me.

Many years, and many notebooks, journals and file folders chock full of design plans, lists, and images later, I still believe in the power of the Someday/Maybe as a way of giving ourselves permission to have creative ideas, even when we can't commit to them in the moment.

I came across this site today from a life coach who is encouraging people to capture their biggest dreams and aspirations on her free website, SuperViva. The feature I liked most about it is that you can easily mark an item on your list "Active" or "Backburner". The backburner seems to me another way of saying, I still like this thought enough to keep it, but I just don't have the resources to commit to it right now. It can take some courage to move that fantastically cool idea OFF your "To-Do" list and over to your Someday/Maybe/Backburner list because then you have to trust that sometime in the future you will have more time, more energy, or more money; and that you will get to some of those cool ideas.

The other issue of trust is whether or not you will remember that cool idea, which is where GTD comes in as a fail-safe way of keeping track of things without relying on your fallable memory. For me the weekly review has made all the difference in being able to trust that my Someday/Maybe list is alive and well. I review it every week, no matter how large it gets, knowing that I'm keeping those items around for a reason. Often times I find I've already done a few things on the list without even planning it that way, and I also end up removing the items that just don't have value for me anymore.

Just hearing the term "Backburner" after such a long time of being used to the terminology "Someday/Maybe" reminded me that this isn't just a list I keep because a smart guy said so. It's a list I keep because my dreams matter to me now just as much as they did when I was 10 years old.

Posted by Lisa at May 25, 2006 09:29 AM