I love hearing how other people structure and use their lists. When I find an idea I like, I try it and see if it works for me. Sometimes, they are a keeper. Sometimes, they don’t work for me and out they go.

And then there are ideas that are DOA.

I read one of these this morning. The author of the article said that he takes the tasks on his ‘someday/maybe’ list and either puts them on his calendar or deletes them.

He says this eliminates a lengthy weekly review of all of the tasks on that list.

I have three issues with this:

Issue no. one: Tasks on my someday/maybe list are merely ideas. I have zero commitment to them. I may do them, someday, but the odds are that I won’t. Why should I schedule anything I probably won’t do?

Issue no. two: When the scheduled date for the task arrives, if the author can’t or doesn’t want to do it, he re-schedules it (or deletes it). Since I don’t see the value in scheduling someday/maybe tasks to begin with, the idea of continually re-scheduling them seems like a poor use of my time.

Don’t they just clog up your calendar or tickler list?

Which leads me to

Issue no. three: Scheduling tasks doesn’t work for me, period.

I know many people do this successfully but unless a task has a due date or I have to get started on it so I can meet a future due date, I don’t schedule it.

Instead, I keep my lists of active tasks nearby and, once a day (usually), decide which of those tasks I’m going to do that day or that week.

I spend no time trying to figure out the priority of tasks I may not get to for weeks or months, and no time scheduling them.

A someday/maybe list does tend to get big and unwieldy, however, and I admit I don’t go through mine every week. I go through it periodically and purge ideas that no longer appeal to me, and move the ones that do to another list.

To save time, sometimes I go through my someday/maybe list and only look at items that have a certain tag or that were added to the list over a year ago.

Of course, the biggest time-saver is not adding ideas (like this one) to the list in the first place.

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