253 ideas · One personal list

Places to go, things to make, and experiences to share.

Bucket list ideas worth doing before you die

Browse ideas by category, open one for a closer look, and keep the ones you want to do. Start with something small or make room for a longer ambition.

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Travel Adventure Creative Achievement Relationships Contribution Food & Culinary Health & Vitality Mindfulness Reflection

Travel

25 ideas

Famous people who checked travel off their list

Barack Obama→Oprah Winfrey→

Creative

24 ideas

Famous people who checked creative off their list

Will Smith→Barack Obama→

Achievement

25 ideas

Famous people who checked achievement off their list

Will Smith→Barack Obama→

Relationships

30 ideas

Volunteer abroad for at least a month

Reconnect with someone you've lost touch with

Host a dinner party for 20+ people

Make a close friend in another country

Mentor someone just starting out in your field

Attend a world-class sporting event live

Tell the most important people in your life why they matter

Throw a surprise party that genuinely surprises someone

Join a community choir or theatre group

Take a road trip with your best friends

Write heartfelt letters to 10 people who changed your life

Spend a week with your grandparents or elders

Host a family reunion

Learn someone's language to have a conversation with them

Attend a multi-day music festival

Do a group charity challenge with friends

Organise a neighbourhood event

Get married or celebrate a long-term partnership

Spend a month living with a foreign family

Teach a skill you're good at to a group of strangers

Have a meaningful conversation with a complete stranger every week for a year

Co-write something with a friend

Show up for someone in a crisis without being asked

Celebrate someone else's milestone as if it were your own

Ask forgiveness from someone you hurt

Forgive someone who hurt you

Have one real conversation with a grandparent before it is too late

Repair a relationship you damaged

Write a letter to someone who changed your life and send it

Spend a week with each of your parents while they are well enough to travel

Famous people who checked relationships off their list

Mark Zuckerberg→Bill Clinton→

Contribution

25 ideas

Plant 1,000 trees

Fund a child's education for a year

Build something that outlasts you

Raise money for a cause you deeply believe in

Donate anonymously and tell no one

Start a scholarship fund

Build a school or library in an underserved community

Volunteer at a hospital for a year

Teach English in a developing country

Adopt or foster a child

Donate a kidney or be a living donor

Leave a legacy gift to a charity in your will

Start a foundation

Clean up a beach or river in your community

Create a free resource that helps thousands of people

Advocate for a policy change you believe in

Feed a hundred families

Sponsor a refugee family

Run for local office

Start a community garden

Write a book that changes someone's life

Give blood 50 times in your life

Reduce your carbon footprint to near zero

Build homes with Habitat for Humanity

Leave a place cleaner and more hopeful than you found it

Famous people who checked contribution off their list

Oprah Winfrey→

Food & Culinary

24 ideas

Eat street food in Bangkok

Bake sourdough weekly for a year

Forage for wild mushrooms

Make cheese from scratch

Eat at a 3-star Michelin restaurant

Brew your own beer or wine

Grow something you can eat from seed to plate

Create a family cookbook with old recipes

Eat a meal cooked by a grandmother in her home

Master one dish so well you could teach it

Roast your own coffee beans

Preserve a season: jam, pickle, ferment

Eat at the source: coffee in Ethiopia, tea in Japan, chocolate in Ecuador

Cook a whole animal from nose to tail

Make pasta from scratch

Eat something you foraged or caught yourself

Take a cooking class in the country the cuisine is from

Bake a wedding cake for someone you love

Learn to butcher a whole fish

Ferment something for the first time

Eat a 12-course tasting menu

Make your own condiments from scratch

Cook a meal over an open fire

Eat your way through a country one market at a time

Mindfulness

25 ideas

Do a 10-day silent meditation retreat

Spend a week fully off-grid

Watch a sunrise and a sunset in the same day

Meditate every day for 365 days

Do a solo camping trip with no phone

Take a tea ceremony class

Spend a day in complete silence

Watch a meteor shower from a dark sky location

Sit with a dying person and just be present

Do a digital detox for a full week

Practice ichigo ichie: treat one ordinary day as unrepeatable

Walk a labyrinth or pilgrimage slowly

Spend a night alone in the wilderness

Learn to identify 10 bird species by song

Spend an hour watching a single tree

Take a slow travel trip: one town, one week, no plan

Spend a week in a monastery or retreat centre

Learn to sit with discomfort without reaching for your phone

Watch a storm roll in from start to finish

Spend a full day with no screens

Take a forest bathing walk

Create a morning ritual you keep for a year

Spend a night stargazing with no agenda

Do a walking meditation every morning for a month

Spend an afternoon doing one thing at a time

Reflection

25 ideas

Record your parents life stories

Write your ethical will: values, lessons, what you want passed down

Keep a journal for a full year

Keep a journal for a decade

Write a letter to your younger self

Write a letter to your future self and read it in 10 years

Change your mind publicly on something important

Do a structured life review: decade by decade

Create a photo book of one year of your life

Write the story of how you became who you are

Record a conversation with an elder and preserve it

Write down everything you know about your family history

Spend a day reviewing every job, relationship, and home you have had

Write your obituary the way you would want it read

Make a list of 100 things you are grateful for

Re-read a book that changed your life and see what you notice now

Write a letter to someone you have not forgiven and then decide whether to send it

Write a manifesto for how you want to live

Spend a birthday alone reflecting on the past year

Write down your core values and check them against how you actually spend your time

Create a personal annual report

Write a forgiveness letter to yourself

Spend a day visiting places that shaped you

Write the speech you would give at your own retirement

Make a timeline of the five most important moments of your life

Found something that speaks to you?

Save the ideas you want to do, mark them fulfilled when you finish, and remember what happened in your weekly journal.

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