CONCEPT
The Someday/Maybe List
Allen's repository for <em>deferred possibilities</em> — ideas that are interesting but not currently actionable — transformed by AI from a release mechanism into a menu of immediately executable temptations.
The Someday/Maybe list is the GTD container for ideas and projects the practitioner has decided not to pursue now but wants to preserve for possible future activation. Travel destinations, book concepts, hobby investigations, speculative business ideas — whatever the practitioner wants to acknowledge without committing to. Allen designed the list as a release mechanism: by externalizing the idea into a system that will reliably surface it during future reviews, the mind is given permission to release it from active cycling. The list was psychologically sustainable in the pre-AI era because the items on it were genuinely deferred — executing them would require substantial future investment. When execution becomes cheap, the items are no longer safely deferred, and the list transforms from a release mechanism into an accusation of insufficient ambition.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The Someday/Maybe list performed a subtle and important psychological function that practitioners often underestimated. It was not merely a parking lot for ideas. It was a trust mechanism: the mind
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