“Someday” Is Not a Plan
- Mark Johnson
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
“Someday” is not a plan.
It’s a strategy for arriving at the end of life with regret.
That sentence may sound harsh, but it’s true. In fact, “someday” might be one of the most dangerous words in the English language.
It’s subtle. It sounds harmless. It even sounds hopeful.
But what it really does is delay life.
Not for a day.
Not for a week.
Sometimes for decades.
And the tragedy is that most people don’t realize what’s happening until the clock has already run most of the way down.
When people say “someday,” they usually mean:
Someday I’ll get in shape.
Someday I’ll start that business.
Someday I’ll write that book.
Someday I’ll take that trip.
Someday I’ll finally pursue the life I really want.
But someday is not a date on the calendar found with the boundaries of your birth and death. Pause a moment and let that sink in…
It’s not even a direction.
It’s a holding pattern.
It allows the mind to feel temporarily satisfied while taking no real action.
And that’s the trap.
Because life does not move in “somedays.” Life moves in dates on the actual calendar.
Actual days. Month/Day/Year.
The calendar never contains a square labeled “Someday.”
The Math of Delay
Here’s the brutal arithmetic of life:
If you delay something for one year, you lose 365 days of progress / life.
Delay it for ten years and you lose 3,650 days.
Delay it for thirty years and you may never get another chance.
Yet people do this constantly.
They postpone fitness until the body has already deteriorated.
They postpone dreams until responsibilities pile up and snuff them out.
They postpone courage until fear becomes habit, a mountain they feel is too high to ever climb.
And all along the word “someday” is doing its quiet work.
It keeps the dream alive just enough that you don’t confront the truth.
You’re not pursuing it.
You’re postponing it.
Newsflash! Most dreams don’t die in some spectacular failure.
They die slowly.
They die from neglect.
They die from distraction.
They die because someone kept saying, “I’ll get to it… someday.”
That’s the real danger of the word.
It feels safe.
But safety is often the enemy of fulfillment.
Because the things that create a meaningful life—growth, courage, adventure, achievement—rarely happen inside comfort.
They happen when someone decides that today is the day.
Regret Has a Pattern
Talk to people who have reached the later chapters of life and a pattern emerges.
Very few say they regret trying and failing.
But many regret not trying at all.
They regret the risks they didn’t take.
The conversations they didn’t have.
The dreams they kept postponing.
They regret believing that time would always be available later.
But time doesn’t expand to accommodate our procrastination.
It keeps moving.
Always.
Replace “Someday” With a Date Within The Boundaries of Your Birth and Death!
There’s a simple antidote to the word “someday.”
Replace it with a date.
Not a vague future.
A real moment on the calendar.
Because the moment you assign a date to something, it stops being a fantasy and starts becoming a goal.
“Someday I’ll get fit” becomes
“I start Monday, March 9th, 2026.
“Someday I’ll write that book” becomes
“I write for one hour every morning starting today.”
“Someday I’ll change my life” becomes
“Today.”
That’s when momentum begins.
The Choice is Simple
Life doesn’t wait for perfect timing.
It moves forward with or without your participation.
The question is whether you are going to drift through it, quietly accumulating postponed intentions… Or whether you will decide that someday is today.
Because the truth is simple:
“Someday” is not a plan.
It’s a strategy for arriving at the end of life with regret.
And the best time to abandon that strategy is right now because… There is Urgency!
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—
Mark Johnson
March 2026
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