Today, Someday & Wishlist

Three boundaries of work: what you're doing now, what you're parking, and what you're keeping as a possibility.

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Today

Today is the set of Actions you will touch today. It's populated during your Daily Review each morning. When it's empty, your day is done.

How Today is filled

Actions arrive in Today in two ways:

• Automatic: From each active Flow, the first uncompleted Action surfaces automatically. If you have five active Flows, five Actions arrive in Today — one per Flow — without any effort from you. This is the default.
• Manual: You can pull additional Actions into Today if you want to work ahead, override the default sequence, or address something that needs to happen today regardless of its position in a Flow.

The combination gives you both automatic momentum (the system keeps surfacing work) and deliberate control (you decide what else to bring in).

If the auto-filled slate already matches your day, that's complete. Curation is optional refinement, not a required ritual — on heavy days, executing the automatic slate as-is is a valid mode of working. The system already did the cognitive work of "what's next?" inside each Flow; you don't owe it a daily redesign on top of that. See Principle 2 for the full agency-conservation logic.

Everything in Today is checkable today

This is the defining property of Today, and it's why the constraint matters.

Every item in Today can be completed today:

• Do — checked when you finish the work
• Delegate — checked when you send the instruction
• Review — checked when you approve (or re-delegate)

Await items don't appear in Today — they're tracked separately, because there's nothing to do until something arrives.

If an item in Today can't be checked today, it shouldn't be in Today. Either it's waiting on something else (make it Await), or it's too large to complete in a day (break it into smaller Actions), or it's not actually ready to work on yet (give it a future date).

Today vs. calendar

Both exist. Don't mix them.

• Calendar — time-bound commitments with a specific time: meetings, appointments, calls, deadlines. They happen when they happen. You can't move them freely.
• Today — flexible Actions you've chosen to work on today. No specific time. You do them when you have capacity.

The distinction matters because mixing them creates false constraints. If "prepare presentation" is in your calendar as an all-day event, it collides with your actual commitments and creates friction. If it's in Today as an Action, you fit it around your meetings when you have focus time.

Your calendar tells you when you're unavailable. Today tells you what you're working on.

When Today is empty

This is the completion signal for the day. Not "it's 6pm" or "I'm tired." Today is empty.

This signal works because Today is a closed set — you built it this morning and committed to finishing it. That's different from a task list, which is always open-ended. A task list never empties; you can always add more. Today empties, because it was never meant to hold everything — only what you chose for today.

This signal is honest because every item in Today was completable. An empty Today means real things got done — not that time passed. You chose these Actions in the morning. They're gone by noon, or 3pm, or end of day. Either way: done.

If Today is regularly not empty at end of day, that's feedback. Either you're overloading it (pull fewer Actions), the Actions are too large (break them down), or something in your Flows is stuck (check during Weekly Review).

Three or more consecutive days where Today hasn't emptied is a Chronic Today Stuck Signal — the completion signal itself is broken, and resolving it takes priority over anything else.

Today capacity

Flow surfacing is a natural capacity limiter. Each active Flow contributes one Action. If you have six active Flows, six Actions arrive automatically. For most people on most days, that's enough.

The overloading problem almost always starts in two places:

• The active Flow set has grown past what you can finish in a day. Principle 3 addresses this directly: when you reach for a new Flow, decide what's leaving — complete, Someday, Wishlist, or delete. Without that trade, the active set silently expands until Today becomes uncompleteable. A practical ceiling for most people is 5–10 active Flows.
• Manual additions. Pulling extra Actions in because they "might fit" or because you feel you should be doing more. Before adding anything manually, ask: can I realistically complete everything already in Today? If the answer is uncertain, don't add more.

A realistic Today is one where you genuinely expect to finish. An optimistic Today is one where you hope to finish. Optimistic Todays produce undone items. Undone items produce pressure. Pressure produces avoidance.

The goal isn't to do as much as possible in a day. The goal is to design a day you can actually finish.

Undone Actions: no backlog

OTD has no "overdue" list.

When an Action isn't completed today, it doesn't enter a backlog or accumulate guilt. It stays at the front of its Flow. Tomorrow morning, Daily Review surfaces it again — as one Action among the day's new set, not as a pile of yesterday's failures.

This is a structural property of OTD. Because Actions live in Flows rather than a flat list, they can't pile up. The list doesn't grow. Tomorrow always starts fresh.

The practical consequence: an undone Action is not a problem to manage. It's work that will surface again when you're ready for it.

What this requires from you: don't treat undone Actions as carry-over debt. Don't mentally add them on top of tomorrow's load before the day starts. Tomorrow's Daily Review will surface them as part of a new, deliberate Today. Design that Today as if it were the first day — because structurally, it is.

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Someday

Someday is where you park things you intend to do — just not now.

What lives in Someday:

• A dormant Flow — a stream of work you've paused
• A dormant Flow cluster — related Flows grouped under a [[keyword]] prefix, a goal you intend to pursue but not yet
• A standalone Action — something you intend to do eventually but not now

Someday is a deferred commitment. The intention to act remains; the timing is paused. This is what distinguishes it from Wishlist — see below.

Moving to Someday

When you decide you're not working on something now:

• Move the Flow or Action to Someday (you can park an entire [[keyword]] cluster the same way)
• It stops surfacing Actions in Today
• It disappears from active view
• It appears in your Weekly Review's Someday list

This is not deletion. You're not giving up — you're acknowledging: not now.

The value of Someday over deletion is that good ideas don't disappear. A Flow that isn't timely now might become critical in three months. A skill you want to develop might have to wait until you finish a current commitment. Someday holds all of it, quietly, until Weekly Review brings it back up.

Someday and Weekly Review

Every Someday item gets reviewed once a week. Two questions:

Is this ready to activate? If something you've been deferring is now timely — circumstances changed, you finished a commitment, the opportunity arrived — pull it back to active. Activation triggers Principle 3: identify what's closing to make room.

Is the intention still real? Some Someday items age out. The thing you said you'd "get to eventually" has been there for months and you've never reached for it. That's information.

Someday aging-out

Someday is not a graveyard. It's a waiting room — items enter with the intention of coming back. When that intention fades, they should leave.

Two thresholds, applied during Weekly Review:

• 6 months without activation consideration — the item has appeared in six monthly reviews without you seriously considering activating it. The honest move is one of:
  • Demote to Wishlist — you're not committing to do this; you're keeping it as a possibility. Most aging-out Someday items belong here.
  • Delete — the intention is gone entirely. Acknowledge and remove.
  • Re-commit — explicitly renew the intention, with a stated trigger ("I'll activate this when X happens"). Without a trigger, the renewal is just deferral.
• No trigger ever defined — if a Someday item has lived there from the start without an activation trigger, it probably never had a real intention behind it. Demote to Wishlist or delete.

The discipline that keeps Someday alive is honesty about your own intentions. If you can't say what would make you activate this, it isn't really Someday.

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Wishlist

Wishlist is where you keep ideas you might pursue but haven't committed to.

Where Someday is "I will do this, just not now," Wishlist is "I might do this, or I might not. I'm keeping it open."

Why separate from Someday

GTD's Someday/Maybe blended two different intents into one list: deferred commitments and uncommitted possibilities. The blend creates a quiet problem.

When deferred commitments and idle possibilities live in the same list:

• Real commitments accumulate guilt — "I said I'd do this and I haven't"
• Idle possibilities accumulate pressure — "I should be doing this too"
• Both kinds of items age, and you can't tell which is which without re-deciding each time

Splitting them lets each list do its job:

• Someday is a small, honest list of things you're genuinely deferring with intent to return.
• Wishlist is an open, low-pressure list of possibilities you're keeping. No guilt attached.

The point of Wishlist is separating possibility from obligation. You can keep a thousand ideas without owing any of them progress.

The discriminator

If you're unsure whether something is Someday or Wishlist, ask:

At the moment I activate this, can I say what step 1 is?

• Yes → Someday. There's a Flow or Action shape already implicit. The work is paused, not undefined.
• No → Wishlist. It's a direction or interest, not a plan. If you ever activate it, the first task will be "figure out what to actually do."

This question is operational. It doesn't ask how you feel about the item. It asks whether you've thought it through enough that activation would be smooth.

The six dimensions

	Someday	Wishlist
Commitment	Personal commitment exists	No commitment
Activation trigger	Defined — "when X finishes," "when Y arrives"	Undefined — "someday," "if I have time"
Next-action shape	Step 1 is identifiable now	Just an idea, possibly one line
Weekly Review question	"Is this ready to activate?"	"Is this still interesting?"
Aging-out	6 months without consideration → demote or delete	Indefinite. No aging pressure.
Stuck Signal applied	Yes — Dormant cluster threshold	No

The asymmetry on aging-out is deliberate. Someday is a commitment store — old uncommitted commitments are a problem to resolve. Wishlist is a possibility store — old possibilities are fine. They cost nothing to keep.

What lives in Wishlist

• Books, courses, skills you might learn — not committed, just interesting
• Project ideas you're not pursuing — sketches without a plan
• Trips, experiences, "someday I'd love to" — open-ended desires
• "It would be nice if I..." — anything where the gap from idea to action is large

A line in Wishlist can be as short as a phrase. No structure required.

Wishlist and Weekly Review

Wishlist gets a light scan each week. The only question:

Does this still spark interest?

If yes, leave it. If no, delete. There's no pressure to activate. There's no aging threshold. There's no resolution path beyond keep-or-delete.

This lightness is the point. Wishlist is the place where ideas can rest without becoming work.

Movement between layers

Items move freely:

• Wishlist → Someday — the possibility crystallized into intent. You can now say what step 1 would be. Promote it.
• Someday → Wishlist — the intent faded but the interest remains. Demote it. Common path during aging-out.
• Wishlist → Active — rare, but possible. When it happens, you usually pass through Someday first (to define step 1) and then activate. Activation triggers Principle 3.
• Someday → Active — direct. Step 1 was already defined; you just open the trade.

The flow between Someday and Wishlist is the system's natural way of letting commitments breathe without forcing a binary keep-or-delete decision.

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How the three layers relate

The mental model:

Active (Flows + Actions in Today)
   ↑↓ Principle 3 trade
Someday  ←→  Wishlist
   │           │
   ↓           ↓
 Delete      Delete

And distinct from all three:

Reference — non-actionable information you keep for lookup

Quick comparison

	Active	Someday	Wishlist	Reference
Surfaces in Today	Yes (front Action)	No	No	No
Future action expected	Yes, now	Yes, deferred	Maybe	No
Commitment	Current	Deferred	None	N/A
Aging behavior	Stuck Signals apply	6mo aging-out	Indefinite	Indefinite

The choice at processing time

When you process an Inbox item that isn't immediately actionable, you have four destinations:

1. Delete — not worth keeping
2. Reference — information only, no action
3. Wishlist — interesting possibility, no commitment
4. Someday — deferred commitment with implicit step 1

These are distinct decisions. Forcing them all into one bucket — as GTD's Someday/Maybe did — sacrifices clarity for simplicity. OTD prefers the clarity.

The choice at Weekly Review

When you scan Someday and Wishlist:

• Someday — apply aging-out honesty. Items linger here with cost.
• Wishlist — apply the interest test. Items linger here with no cost.

The two layers protect each other. Someday stays small and honest because aging items leave for Wishlist. Wishlist stays guilt-free because items in it carry no obligation.

That separation is what makes both layers sustainable over years.