Parked or Forgotten? How to Tell Before It Costs You

I lose track of what I decided and what I just forgot. From the outside, a parked idea and a forgotten one look exactly the same. So I re-argue choices I already made, or find an idea months later and realize I never decided anything about it.

The usual fix is an idea parking lot: one list where every "not now" goes, so it stops nagging you. A parking lot solves half the problem. It holds the ideas you set aside, but it can't tell you which of them you actually decided on, or which ideas never made it onto the list at all.

This post is the fix I use now. It works in a notebook, in Notion or in a spreadsheet, and you set it up once.

What it costs when you can't tell them apart

When a parked idea and a forgotten one look the same, you pay for it in two ways.

You re-decide things you already decided. A few months ago you chose not to launch a second product yet. You had good reasons, but you didn't write them down. Now a customer asks for it, and you lose an evening re-arguing a question you had already answered. Worse, you can end up reversing a good decision because you can't remember why you made it.

You lose ideas you meant to keep. A strong idea comes up on a call. You jot it somewhere, meaning to come back to it. It never gets a decision, so it never gets a place, and by the time you find it again the moment has passed.

Neither cost shows up on a dashboard. Both come out of the one resource a solo founder can't hire more of: your attention.

Every idea belongs in one of four places

The fix is a rule, not a tool. Every idea you have goes in exactly one of four places:

1. Doing now. You're working on it this week or this month.
2. Later, chosen on purpose. You decided it matters, and you decided it waits. That's a decision, not a delay.
3. Not yet defined. You can't yet say what question the idea would answer. The test is whether you can state the question, not whether you can answer it. "Do a podcast" has no question yet, so it stays here. "Should a podcast replace my newsletter?" is a question you can state today, even if you don't know the answer, so that idea goes under Later.
4. Decided against, with one line on why. You closed it, and you wrote down the reason. If you change your mind later, that's a new decision, not a reopened one.

Anything in none of the four wasn't parked. It was forgotten.

Two of those places, not yet defined (with its "can you state the question" test) and decided against, come from Matt Pocock's free, public collection of methods for working with AI. I added them to the Doing now and Later lists I already had, and added the rule above.

The rule works because each place answers a different question. Doing now and Later say when. Not yet defined says what's missing before you can decide. Decided against says why not, in one line you can reread the next time the idea comes back.

Sort your list this week, with any tool

You don't need new software. Open wherever your ideas live now and work through them once:

1. List everything. Pull every idea, request and "we should" into one place: notes, your inbox, sticky notes, the back of a notebook.
2. Place each item in one of the four places. Be honest. If you haven't decided, it isn't Later.
3. For each "not yet defined" item, write the question it would answer. If you can write it, the idea moves to Later or Doing now. If you can't write it yet, it stays where it is, and that's fine.
4. For each "decided against" item, write one line on why. One line is enough. It's for the version of you who meets this idea again in six months.
5. Anything left unplaced was forgotten. Decide on it now, or place it.

The first pass is the slow one. After that, each new idea needs one question: which of the four places does it go in?

My AI team had blind spots too

I run my company with an AI team, so I assumed nothing on my list could slip. The part of my AI team that plans our roadmap once pointed me at the wrong priority. It also saw only about a quarter of our current plan, and it never warned me about either. Now it reads all of it, and tells me when it can't.

I fixed both in the same round of work that gave my plan its two missing places, not yet defined and decided against. Together they changed how I think about any list: it only helps if whoever reads it, whether that's you, a cofounder or an AI, can see all of it and can tell what was decided.

What changed: decisions stay decided

Here is what's different now:

• Ideas I can't phrase yet go on a "not yet defined" list instead of into a half-made plan.
• Anything I rule out is closed with one line on why, so I stop re-arguing it.
• My AI team sees all of the current plan, and tells me when it can't.
• When it suggests what to work on next, it's something I can start today.

I still make every call about which place an idea goes. My AI team keeps the list and flags anything on it that doesn't have a place yet. It's the same split I use for the rest of the company: I decide, and the team keeps track.

Running a company alone shouldn't mean remembering everything alone.

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For the technical write-up, see how we fixed it.