How to save a place so you actually go there
You have a map covered in little flags and you go to the same four places. The gap between saving somewhere and standing in it comes down to three short answers, and you can add them in about ten seconds.
Saving a place feels like a decision. It is closer to a wish.
Somebody says the name, you tap the flag, and both of you feel like something happened.
Here is what a pin on a map actually holds: a name and a location. Here is what makes you go somewhere: a reason, the people you would go with, and a rough window of time when that could happen. None of those three are in the pin, which is why a saved place can sit there for two years while you keep going to the same pizza place. The fix is not a better app, and it is definitely not a longer list. It is writing three extra things down at the moment you save it, while you still remember why you cared. Below there is a converter that turns a pin into a line you can paste into a calendar or a note. Everything on this page works with whatever you already use.
Pin to plan
Runs in your browser · nothing is sent anywhereTake a place you saved and never went to. Put it through here.
THE LINE
THE TRIGGER, FOR WHEN A DATE WOULD BE A LIE
Both lines as plain text, ready to paste into a calendar entry, a note or a message.
A saved place is not a plan, and it never was
Saving somewhere feels productive. It has all the sensations of deciding: somebody recommends a place, you tap the flag, and the thought stops being your problem. Tapping save does not make a plan, though. It only lets you stop thinking about one.
Look at what the pin actually holds. A name and a location, possibly a photo of somebody else’s lunch. Now think about what it takes to visit a place: a reason to go, someone to go with, and some free time. None of those three are in the pin, so six months later you are looking at a flag called Osteria and wondering who told you about it and why you cared.
That is a gap in the saved record rather than a complaint about any particular app. Maps are good at collecting places. The question you have on a Friday night, which is out of these forty, which one, tonight, with these people, is not something a name and a location can answer.
For comparison: Google's help page on saved places and lists, and two write-ups of what people do with them in practice, The Unconventional Route and Wandrly.
What is missing from a pin
Not "it looked nice". The specific thing: the garden at the back, the bread, the fact it is the only place open late near the station. Reasons are what make a place win against your usual one.
Almost nowhere is for everyone. A place is for the kids, or for a date, or for your friend who cannot do noise. Saving without the people is why the list feels flat when you read it.
Not a date. Either a rough slot such as a weekday evening, or something that will happen anyway such as when your parents visit. A broad answer like that is far easier to use than a fixed Thursday.
Book, check the opening hours, ask them if they are free. One small action, so that turning up is not a twelve-step process invented from scratch at the moment you are hungry.
The three-field rule
Here is the whole method, and it is deliberately small enough that you will actually do it while standing in the street.
When you save a place, add three things: who with, roughly when, and why this one. That is it. Ten seconds, at the moment you save it, which is the only moment you still know the answers.
One thing worth getting straight, because it is the part people tangle. “Roughly when” has exactly two allowed answers, and both are fine. Either a window, which is a repeating slot in a normal week, such as a weekday evening or Saturday daytime. Or a trigger, which is something that will happen anyway, such as when your parents next visit or the next time Sam is in town. A window and a trigger are the same field wearing different clothes. What is not allowed in that field is a specific date, because a specific date is a promise you made to a restaurant on behalf of a future person who has other plans.
WHAT YOU SAVED
A flag on a map. In six months this is a name you half recognise attached to a street you have never walked down.
WHAT YOU COULD HAVE SAVED
- With: the two of us, no children
- When: a weekday evening
- Why: the courtyard at the back, and Sam said get the artichokes
Restaurants are the easy example. Here is the same three answers on the other things people save, because a playground and a hiking trail do not want the same note.
| Kind of place | Who with | Roughly when | Why this one |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurant | The two of us, no children | A weekday evening | Courtyard at the back, Sam said get the artichokes |
| Somewhere with the kids | Both children, and whoever is driving | Saturday morning, needs to be before lunch | Indoor bit for rain, and a car park you do not have to pay for |
| A place on a trip | Us, on the Lisbon weekend | Trigger: when we book Lisbon | Ten minutes from the flat we always stay in, open on a Sunday |
| A shop | Me, alone, no rush | Trigger: next time I am near the station with half an hour | The only place that stocks the yarn Mum uses |
| A walk | Me and the dog, or anyone visiting | Sunday, dry weather only | Flat, ninety minutes, and there is a cafe at the far end |
| Somewhere for visitors | Whoever is staying | Trigger: next time my parents come | They liked the last one like this, and it is walkable from ours |
If you would rather write it by hand than use the converter above, this is the whole shape. Copy it once and reuse it.
PLACE: Osteria del Ponte WITH: The two of us, no children WHEN: A weekday evening WHY: The courtyard at the back, Sam said get the artichokes NEXT: Check if they take bookings
Same ten seconds of effort as the tap, more or less. The difference is that the second one can be searched, sorted, and answered later. When somebody asks where you two should go on Thursday, the second version is an answer and the first version is a research project.
Attach it to an event, not to a date
The obvious move is to put the place in your calendar for a specific day. It works for about one place in ten and quietly fails for the rest, because you were not avoiding the place, you just did not have a Tuesday free.
Use a trigger instead, which is the other half of that same “when” field. Your parents visit every couple of months. There is a birthday coming. Somebody comes into town for work twice a year. You already get a free Saturday about once a fortnight. Each of those is a slot looking for a place.
- Write the trigger, not the day. "Next time Sam is in town" is a real instruction. "Sometime this spring" is not, and both of you know it.
- One place per trigger. If three places share a trigger, rank them once now, so that in the moment you are choosing between two, not fourteen.
- Put the trigger where you will be reading. The list you check when you are already deciding, not a folder you have to remember to open.
- Let some triggers never fire. A place saved for a trip you did not take is not a failure. It just sits there costing nothing, which is fine as long as it is not cluttering the list you use every week.
Ten places, and the four that actually happen
Here is a made-up but very recognisable list, one year on. The highlighted rows are the ones somebody actually went to.
The pattern is not subtle. Everything that got visited had a person and an occasion attached to it. The others had only a name, or depended on a trip or a free day that never happened.
This is also the useful test for the ones that never happened. Ask which is true: is the reason missing, or is the occasion missing? Missing reason means you cannot remember why it was interesting, and that one goes. Missing occasion means it is still a good place and you have not had the right day, and that one gets a trigger instead of a deletion.
When you save somewhere, put the name of whoever recommended it in the note. It is the single most useful word, because "the place Anna said about" is how you will search for it, and it is never the name of the restaurant.
The places you never got to all year
At some point the list stops being a set of possibilities and starts being a small monument to things you did not do. Half an hour, once a year, fixes that. Go through it and put every place into one of four piles.
- Give it a trigger. Still interesting, still plausible, just never had the day. Add the who and the when and leave it.
- Move it into a trip. It is three hours away and it belongs to a weekend you have not planned yet. Put it with the trip, not in your everyday list, so it stops taking up space in the decisions you actually make.
- Let it go. You cannot remember why it is there and the name means nothing. Delete it. Nothing is lost, because there was nothing in it.
- Just go this week. Every clear-out turns up two or three places you genuinely want and had simply forgotten. Those do not need a system, they need a Tuesday.
The point is not tidiness. A list you trust gets opened. A list you do not trust gets scrolled past on the way to somewhere familiar.
Where we come into it
dEssence is a place to save things with their context attached: the link, the screenshot of the message where somebody recommended it, your three answers. Later you ask Tracy in the words you would actually use, along the lines of where were we going to take the kids at the weekend. It is not a map, it does not build routes, and it will not tell you what is open now. Keep your map app for that. This one keeps the reason you saved a place, even months later.
Three things people get stuck on
I do not know who I would go with
Then write the kind of person rather than a name. “Anyone, easy to get to” is a real answer, and so is “not the children”. If genuinely nobody comes to mind, that is worth noticing: places with no person attached are the ones that sit unvisited for two years.
Can I save a place just for me?
Of course, and it is one of the better uses of the who field. Write “me, alone”. It stops you filing a quiet Tuesday coffee under things that need organising other humans, which is what makes it never happen.
Where do the triggers actually live?
In the same place as the saved place, not in a separate system. A trigger in a folder you have to remember to open is a trigger that never fires. The one exception worth making is a trip: put trip places with the trip, so they stop crowding the list you use on a normal week.
A pin holds where. Going somewhere needs who, when and why.
Three short answers, written at the moment you save it, are the whole difference between a list of places and a list of things you did.
What the converter does, and what it does not
It is a wording tool, not a search. It takes what you type and arranges it into two lines: one for a rough window, one for a trigger. It does not look the place up, it has never heard of it, and it has no opinion on whether it is any good.
The blanks stay blank. If you leave out the reason, the output says so rather than inventing something warm and general. The missing reason is the most common thing that kills a saved place, so it would be an odd thing to paper over.
Nothing leaves the page. No account, no upload, no storage. Close the tab and it is gone, including the example.
The ten places in the table are written by us as an illustration, not collected from anybody's account.
Further reading on this topic: Google Maps help on saved places, The Unconventional Route, Wandrly.