Tools for Thought

The flip side of managing commitments is managing options. There’s a subtle but fundamental difference between choosing not to act on an option and not choosing to act on it. The former is proactive triage, the latter is indecision. Some things are not worth doing now, but possibly later. Some things, though interesting, are not realistically worth committing time or energy on, now or later.

For any project that you’re not able or willing to commit to now, but possibly later, put it on a list called Someday/Maybe.

A few items on the list would be things like:

• Train for and complete a marathon
• Install hardwood floors
• Start a speech consulting business
• Vacation in Luang Prabang

Someday/Maybe completes an organizational framework of five major placeholders. Intray paperwork and inbox email will either get discarded or processed into one or more of the following categories:

• Next Actions (optionally organized by context)
• Projects
• Calendar
• Waiting For
• Someday/Maybe

Putting items on a Someday/Maybe list allows you to consciously decide whether or not to keep them as future options. Going to graduate school might be a worthwhile project, but not actionable until you’ve fulfilled certain short-term career goals. Putting a down payment on a car might not be a priority until you’ve established an adequate emergency fund. Changing cell phone carriers might be an option to take after the contract with your current provider has expired.

Some projects seem like remote possibilities, like starting a newspaper, but no matter how much you try to dismiss them, they keep haunting you. Keep them on your Someday/Maybe list, and out of your head. Each week you get a chance to review each item on the list and decide that it’s still a Someday/Maybe, that it’s time to make it an active project with a next action, or that it’s time to cross it off the list once and for all.

In a world of infinite options, there’s always the danger of the Someday/Maybe list getting out of hand. Most people who keep the list find that it becomes larger than their Project list. So how to we decide whether to put it on Someday/Maybe, or leave it off entirely? If there’s a strong possibility that you’ll think of the item again over time, it should probably go on Someday/Maybe.

There are other ways to manage options. If you have a tickler file, you might want to write a note to yourself, and file it for review at a date that’s arbitrary (e.g. in two weeks) or relevant (three days before an event); then it’s out of the regular review process. You can defer a decision by putting the item on your calendar, and review it on that date.

If you have many options that fall in a single category, like DVDs to buy or books to read, it’s more manageable to keep them in their own checklists. Someday/Maybe is ideal for items that you would potentially migrate to your Project list. For instance, I keep a backlog of article ideas on a checklist, articles currently being written on my Project list, and imminent writing projects on Someday/Maybe.

But how you manage future options is more of an art than a science. Experiment until you come up with a set of placeholders that makes intuitive and logical sense.