Five things worth your attention this week. Let’s go.
The Shift
forgot what was on my someday list
Not lost it. Forgot what was on it.
I’ve kept that list for years, properly kept, not scribbled. Ideas, trips, the certification, the thing I want to build when there’s room. Last month I opened it, and half of it didn’t register. Not because the ideas were bad. Because I’d stopped looking. The list had quietly become a place I put things so I’d stop thinking about them.
That’s the shift: a list you never open isn’t a plan, it’s storage. And storage is where ambition goes to be quiet.
Someday isn’t a date. It’s a way of saying not now without ever having to say never. Which is comfortable. It’s also how three years pass.
The System
Three lists, one dropdown: Do, Waiting On, Decide. That’s the whole thing.
Google Tasks gives you exactly one field to work with – THE DATE – so each list puts it to a different job.
In Do, the date is the day it happens; if you can’t name the day, it isn’t a Do yet.
In Waiting On, the date isn’t a deadline; it’s the day you chase.
In Decide, it’s decide-by, and the task is written as the question with the options sitting underneath it.
Moving something between them is a field change, not a retype. A Do that gets blocked becomes a Waiting On in two taps.
What it won’t do: your calendar shows all three lists as a single layer, so you can’t send Do to your day and keep Waiting On out of it. Everything dated turns up.
It won’t think for you. It’ll just stop your Do list from quietly swallowing every decision you haven’t made yet.
Everything in this week’s system runs on a free personal Google account. Tasks, Calendar, Drive, Gmail, no upgrade needed, and I’d rather you didn’t buy one you don’t need.
Google Business Starter or Business Standard Workspace is what you add when you want your own domain in your email address instead of @gmail.com, plus admin controls and more storage.
That’s the real difference for most people.
Link in Tried & Trues
The Habit
Drink Water. It sounds simple, but you know you’re not drinking enough. I fill the mug before I do anything else. Same mug, same spot, first thing, and then I keep refilling it until I’ve hit half my body weight in ounces. It stuck because the number was never the habit. The filling was. I stopped trying to remember to drink water and started remembering to fill one cup, which turns out to be a much smaller thing to remember.
Worth Your Attention
Plaud. A recorder about the size of a credit card. One press, and a meeting, a call, or a drive-time ramble comes back as a clean transcript and a summary with the action items already pulled out.
The desktop app is the part I’d have paid for separately. It sits in the background and notices when a call starts — Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, Slack — and captures it without a bot sliding into the participant list announcing itself. Everything lands in the same place as what the device records, so there’s one archive instead of two.
Two honest notes: devices start at $159, and each includes 300 transcription minutes a month free- generous until a few long meetings eat it. And tell people you’re recording. Every time.
Link in Tried & Trues
The Question
What’s the oldest thing on your list, and is it still yours, or are you just used to carrying it?