The Waiting For list nobody keeps

by Andreas Tissen · 16 August 2026 · updated 8 September 2026

Almost nobody maintains the cheapest list in any productivity system, even though it is the list that makes you look organised to everybody else.

Think of the last three things you are owed. A contract somebody was going to send. A quote. An answer. You know roughly who and roughly when, and if one of them never arrives you will find out in a fortnight, from the consequence.

Every method has a list for exactly this; GTD's name for it is Waiting For. Almost nobody keeps it. The pay-off arrives later than the effort does, which is true of every good habit and of every abandoned one.

Only three fields

The waiting-for template in Pando: who-owes-what placeholder lines with asked-and-chased dates in the notes, a grey insurer example after two chases, and an agent prompt that reports what went quiet

The list survives only if adding to it costs one line:

who owes it,
what it is,
when you asked, and the dates you chased.

That is all. The moment you add a status field or a priority, the list becomes a form, and forms get abandoned.

The dates in the note are what make the list useful in an argument. "Asked 02 Aug, chased 09 and 16 Aug" is a fact. "I think I asked a while ago" is a feeling, and it loses.

Where the list belongs

Under the project it came from. Not in a separate app. Two reasons.

You add to it at the exact moment you finish an email, which is when the project is already on screen. A separate app means switching, switching means later, and later means never.

And when the project ends, its outstanding items end with it. A global Waiting-For list keeps growing forever, because nothing in it ever expires.

What to do on Friday

The whole ritual is two minutes at the weekly review. Read the list. Chase anything older than a week, and note the date you chased. Nothing else.

The effect is out of proportion to the effort. You stop being the person who forgets what they were promised and become the person who chases politely on the seventh day, and other people notice that long before they notice anything else about your system.

The half an agent can do

An agent reading the branch can do the boring half. It points out what has gone quiet ("three items over a week, one over a fortnight") and drafts the chasing message with the dates already in it. Chasing on your behalf is the line it must not cross, because tone with a person you know is not a thing to delegate.

Take the list

Open the template, press "Show in my Pando", and put the three things you are owed into it right now, with the dates you asked. If you cannot remember the dates, that is the finding.