Using incubation lists

I am currently experimenting with an incubate list for items that I want to get to soon, but not right now.  My lists for work had become too long and I realised a couple of weeks ago that some of the items just didn't have a high enough priority at the moment to be on my regular action lists.  The question was where to put them so that I could be sure that they would be reviewed often enough.  I had recently read a thread on the GTD Connect forums about incubating to "month X" and placing the list in the tickler to be reviewed at that point.  This really made sense to me so I have given the idea a try from April to May.  I made the "incubate" list in mid-April and placed it in my tickler for 1st May, with a reminder in outlook to check it on that day. 
The list worked really well - I had much tidier and more focused actions for April that really helped me to engage with my lists (see also my post on coloured paper!) and could be certain that the items I had incubated would not be forgotten.  When 1st May came round I brought out the list, scanned through it and put a couple of the items back onto my action lists.  The rest stayed on the incubate list to be looked at in 3 weeks time and went back into the tickler (with the appropriate reminder).
This list is obviously a version of Someday/Maybe, but feels more active.  I have always struggled a bit with the Someday/Maybe list.  I can see its value and wish that I could utilise it better, but somehow I always feel slightly nervous about it for items that need to done at some point, just not now.  I'm very happy to use it for items that I'd like to do, but don't actually matter if I don't get to them.
The incubate list is definitely the best route I have found so far to stay comfortable with that "not now but later" type of list.

David's article in the recent GTD newsletter, Productive Living, about "listless lists" really resonated with me.

I had suddenly found that my @office list was repelling me last week and used a strategy that I think was discussed in the newsletter (and has certainly been mentioned in various posts around the GTD forums) to create an attractive list again: I moved quite a few items to Someday/Maybe.

I realised that my problem was that I didn't have a Someday/Maybe list that I fully trusted for items that I wouldn't get to this week, but want to get to within 2-3 weeks. I have remedied this by creating a short term Someday/Maybe that I will always check at the weekly review. I don't want to review my longer term items every WR and this was subtly preventing me from using the list to relieve the pressure on my everyday context lists.

I use paper and prefer to work from just one A4 page, so when I reach the bottom of the page I re-write my actions that are still to be completed on a new sheet and toss the old one. My work is such that this works quite well, as I have a lot of short actions that are longer than 2 mins but can be completed in 10-20mins and I can therefore normally cross off quite a number of actions over the course of a couple of days and don't need to re-write a long list when reaching the bottom of the page. However, my workload has been heavier than usual for the last couple of weeks and this has forced me to rethink where I keep a few of the NAs that are not as important. Moving them to the short term Someday/Maybe has been really liberating!

Once again David is spot on - re-negotiating your commitments as your priorities shift is vital to stay in control and ensure that you are confident that you are doing what you should be, when you should be.