I will try to avoid this getting slightly meta, so here goes… I started posting ‘life lists’ here because I always found the lists people create super useful in terms of the advice they gave. Who doesn’t enjoy a load of life experiences boiled down into an actionable list? Plus, when it comes to productivity, it is tough to beat a good, prioritised to-do list. However, there is the idea of an overal ‘life list’.

I came across the concept of such a life list over on the now defunt website ’43 Things’. If you’ve never heard of it, it was basically a website where you posted 43 things that you would like to achieve in your life, which you then posted about every time you acieved one of those goals. It was sort of like a bucket list meets public accountability. However, the downfall with a lot of these life lists is that they are way too fuzzy. Ask fuzzy questions, get fuzzy answers. Meaning that, they are so vague, so wishy-washy, that it becomes difficult to really achieve what you’re aiming for. What a lot of these life list ambitions really needed was a SMART target – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Bound.

If you apply the SMART target principle to any goals you wish to achieve as part of your life list, you are making things a lot less fuzzy, so you’ll get less fuzzy results. For example, let us say an entry on my life list is to “Write a novel”. It is way too fuzzy, but if I say “Write and publish a novel about the struggles of an aspiring author by the end of 2025”, we getting a lot more specific and we’re setting a dealine – which crucially allows us to monitor progress. If we don’t measure progress, we can’t manage progress. So if we’re measuring progress, and we’re half way through the time allowed to complete but we’ve only written one chapter of our model, we know we need to put our foot on the creative gas pedal.

The items on your Life List are meant to be the big things. The big ticket items that will make you feel that you’re living the life you’ve always wanted. The things you will look back on and feel super-proud you achieved it. It’s all relative, but think the big thoughts. Also, consider publishing this list online for some friendly accountability. There’s nothing quite like the judgy pressure of friends and internet strangers.

Wednesday will be another Guilty Pleasure, while Friday will see me catching the last days of civilisation. If you don’t want to miss any of those posts, why not subcribe?