A bucket list is the list of things you want to do, see and become in your lifetime. Written down, it stops being a daydream and becomes the raw material for a life you design on purpose.
Someday is not a date, and the list is only in your head.
Everyone has a bucket list, even if it has never been written down. Learn to sail properly. See the southern lights. Take the family somewhere they will still talk about in twenty years.
It has never been written down, so it never competes with anything. And the things that never compete are the things that never happen.
“Someday was a word I used instead of a date.”
“The list only existed when somebody asked me about it.”
“I’d remember one of them, feel something, and forget it again by Monday.”
“Everything on it was possible. None of it was written down.”
What is a bucket list?
A bucket list is a list of the experiences and achievements you want to have in your lifetime — the places, the skills and the moments you would regret missing. The name comes from the old phrase “kick the bucket”, but the idea is simpler than the name: decide what a life well lived means to you while there is still time to live it.
A good bucket list mixes the big and the small. A lifetime bucket list with only enormous things on it is a list nobody touches.
The answer
How to make a bucket list that actually gets done
Four steps. The first takes ten minutes; the rest take a lifetime, which is the point.
Write everything down.Every someday, no matter how big, silly or late. Capture first; judge later.
Ask the regret question.Not “what’s impressive” but “what would I regret not having done?” That question produces a different list, and a shorter one.
Put the small ones on too.A list of only enormous things is a list nobody opens. Small ones get ticked, and ticking keeps the list alive.
Give one of them a date.The moment one stops being someday and starts being this year, it becomes a goal.
In VoiceFirstPlanner, say it the moment it occurs to you — in the car, on the boat, halfway through someone else’s holiday photos — and it lands on your bucket list with a tick box. The list sits in Life Planning beside your values and goals, rather than in a separate app you open twice a year. When one starts looking possible, Goals sits in the same section, ready to give it a date.
“Add a world trip to my bucket list”
It’s on the list, waiting.
Life Planning › Bucket List › + Add
Same result, typed.
Ten items on the free plan, unlimited on Premium.
The honest version
Bucket list ideas: what to put on your list
The common things on a bucket list — skydiving, a marathon, a big trip — turn up on list after list, and plenty of the people who write them down do not want to do them. They want to have been brave once.
So start with the regret question, then borrow freely. Here are bucket list ideas to get the list moving — things to put on a bucket list, from the enormous to the small.
Places
See the northern or southern lights
Watch the sun come up from a mountain top
Visit the town a grandparent grew up in
Swim under a waterfall
Take a long train journey across a country
Skills
Learn to sail properly
Learn a language well enough for a real conversation
Play one song all the way through on an instrument
Cook one dish properly, from scratch
Making something
Write the book
Build something with your own hands
Plant a tree and watch it grow
Record the family stories before they’re gone
People
Take the family somewhere they’ll talk about in twenty years
Get back in touch with an old friend
Thank the teacher who changed things
Teach a child something you love
Challenges
Run a race
Walk a long-distance trail
Spend a whole day without a phone
Small ones
Watch a meteor shower
Eat at a good restaurant on your own
See a band you loved at sixteen
A bucket list example
Learn to sail properlynot a week’s charter — actually sail
See the southern lightsonce, from somewhere dark
Write the bookthe one you have described to people for years
The connection
A bucket list is a goal that hasn’t been given a date yet.
That is the whole relationship, and it is why the list lives beside your goals and not in a notes app.
Some things will stay on the list for a decade, and that is fine — a list you never finish is not a failure, it is a life with some room left in it. But every so often one of them stops being someday and starts being this year. When it does, Goals is right there to give it a date.
I built boats for other people for years and kept meaning to finish one of my own. It was never on a list. It was just something I said.
The one that got finished was the one that got written down.
— Dave Rees, Founder. From boatbuilder, to business owner, to Founder.
A bucket list template
On paper or in a bucket list journal, four columns do the work:
The dream — what it is, in one line.
Why it matters — the real reason, not the impressive one.
Rough when — a season or a year is enough.
First step — one small thing that would move it.
The Bucket List workbook walks through the whole method — dream, choose, date, start — in seven short chapters.
A list of the experiences and achievements you want to have in your lifetime — the places, skills and moments you would regret missing.
What should be on a bucket list?
Whatever you would regret not having done. Mix big dreams with small ones; the small ones keep the list alive.
How many things should be on a bucket list?
There is no right number. A list long enough to dream with and short enough to act on works best — and one item with a date beats fifty without.
Is there a bucket list app?
VoiceFirstPlanner has a bucket list built into Life Planning. Say an idea the moment you have it and it lands on the list, beside your values and goals. Ten items on the free plan, unlimited on Premium.
Write it down. That’s the difference between a list and a wish.
Free account. No card, no clock. Your bucket list sits in Life Planning, in the same app as your daily planner.
