Coaching practices for There's This Item That's Been Sitting on My List for Weeks and I Keep Sliding Right Past it It's Just One Vague Word Like Taxes and Every Time I Look at it I Don't Even Know Where I'd Actually Begin
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For There's This Item That's Been Sitting on My List for Weeks and I Keep Sliding Right Past it It's Just One Vague Word Like Taxes and Every Time I Look at it I Don't Even Know Where I'd Actually Begin, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- There’s this item that’s been sitting on my list for weeks and I keep sliding right past it
- There’s a thing I’ve told myself I’ll do "someday" for years now
- My list of dreams is just one long undated jumble, and because nothing on it has a "when," it all feels equally far off and equally deferrable
- My list throws "try that recipe this month" in with "write a memoir before I die" as if they’re the same size
- There’s one thing I genuinely want to do that I keep saying I’ll get to "next year," and it never moves because I’ve never once put real money or an actual date on it
Practices that may help
- Clarify each item into a concrete next action
For every captured item, decide what it is and the very next physical action.
Getting Things Done (GTD), Made Practical - Distinguish genuine deferral from disguised refusal
An item that has been on the someday list for two or more years is not deferred — it has been declined without being acknowledged.
The Someday List - Categorize list items by time horizon
Sort items into near (this year), medium (this decade), and distant — then schedule the near-term ones immediately.
The Bucket List Method - Give someday items a time horizon to distinguish near and far
Not all someday items are equal — some are waiting for next month, others for retirement.
The Someday List - Fund and schedule one item now
Put money and a date on one item before the session ends — nothing else converts intention to action as reliably.
The Bucket List Method - Review the someday list weekly — even briefly
An unreviewed someday list is a guilt pile; a reviewed one is a planning resource.
The Someday List - Review every active project for a current next action
For every project you have open, confirm there is one and only one clearly defined next action.
The GTD Weekly Review - Migrate tasks deliberately at the end of each month
At the month’s end, rewrite unfinished tasks by hand — only those worth the effort of rewriting survive.
The Bullet Journal Method, Made Practical - Use the someday list as a values barometer
What you keep adding to the someday list — and what you keep not doing — reveals what you actually value versus what you think you value.
The Someday List - Systematically process the backlog
Work through old, unfinished tasks in order rather than perpetually re-triaging them.
Do It Tomorrow, Made Practical
Related concerns
- When The Action Method Verb Led Action Steps
An Action Step that begins with a verb is completable; one that doesn’t is usually a wish or a category, not a task.
Write every Action Step starting with a verb
- When The Bucket List Method Review The List Quarterly
A list reviewed only at writing is nostalgia; one reviewed quarterly is a live planning document.
Review and revise the bucket list quarterly
- When The Eisenhower Life Audit Identify Quadrant Two Projects
Name the important-but-not-urgent things you keep meaning to start — they represent your real priorities.
Identify your unstarted Quadrant 2 projects
- Bucket List Method
A bucket list, used seriously, forces clarity about what you actually want from your remaining time — not a fantasy wish list but a working inventory of experiences and goals that get scheduled, funded, and pursued. The method works best when it is grounded in temporal awareness (life is finite) and actively reviewed rather than written once and forgotten. Evidence is largely anecdotal and from life design practice; the underlying motivation mechanisms are real.
- Someday List Gtd
A someday list (popularized in David Allen’s Getting Things Done framework and common in life-design practice) is a trusted place to park valuable ideas, projects, and desires that are not actionable now without losing them or letting them occupy mental RAM. Its value depends entirely on the reviews being regular enough that you trust the list, and honest enough that it stays current. There is limited formal research on this specific tool, but the underlying capture-and-clarify mechanism is consistent with cognitive offloading research.
- Someday List Time Horizons
Not all someday items are equal — some are waiting for next month, others for retirement.
Give someday items a time horizon to distinguish near and far
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