The IMPOSSIBLE List

Anyone motivated to be successful—to really make an impact with your life—has a list of important things they want to do. Things to have, things to be. Places they want to go, people they’d love to meet.

You may not have a list of life goals all written down on paper. You probably keep an immediate to-do list, you might have some of your long-term life goals written down on scraps of paper or word doc lists on your computer here and there, but you know at the very least you have those things somewhere in the back of your mind.

I’ve challenged myself with yearly goals in the last couple years, and I’ve mapped out plans for my businesses and different projects. I don’t frequently achieve everything on my lists, but as my friend Ramit Sethi once told me, if you’re not failing at a couple things each month, you’re not trying hard enough.

And I’ve found that sharing those goals publicly gives me additional motivation and accountability to follow through, and sometimes friends and readers can offer words of advice, help, or partnership on some goals.

I’ve had some pieces of the puzzle in the works for a long time, but I hadn’t put together a comprehensive “bucket list” of things I want to do before I die until recently. It wasn’t until Sean Ogle recently wrote about bucket lists, and how to identify the most important life goals that will enable you to achieve the other items on your list—the travel goals, the possessions, the fun stuff—that I finally got motivated to really solidify my whole life list and put it out here to share with the world.

Several friends and bloggers have compiled great bucket lists that have helped inspire some of the things I decided to put on my list. There’s a mix of places I’d love to jet set, landmarks I’d like to see, adventures I’d like to have, experiences I hope to share with specific friends and family, and of course I immediately took Sean’s advice and prioritized the importance of the enabling goals that will make everything else possible.

So without further ado, here’s my bucket list—or, 84 adventures you can follow me on here at Thrilling Heroics:

Enabling Goals

1. Develop an online business that earns over $3000/month in passive income.
2. Build a blog with 10,000+ subscribers.
3. Write an ebook or launch a digital product that earns $6,000+.
4. Publish a best-selling book.
5. Achieve 100% freedom from all debt.
6. Get an article published in the print edition of Esquire, GQ, Wired, Details, or Maxim magazine.
7. Leverage my blog audience to make a major positive impact in at least 10 peoples lives (we’ve already helped my friend Ryan, and Tim & Rodrigo (two scholarship awardees at Digital Nomad Academy).
8. Speak at South by Southwest Interactive and stick around for the music festival in Austin, Texas.
9. Set up a Hong Kong corporation.
10. Make at least $200K in a given year.
11. Get a second passport, and maybe a third too.
12. Complete my Personal MBA.
13. Attend an official TED Conference. (Already had the honor of helping plan the locally-organized TEDxBKK!)
14. Sell my photography and other creative artwork.
15. Organize a lifestyle business summit (March 2014 in Costa Rica! – a 5 so far SE Asia)

Adventures to Have & Things to Do

1. Learn to rock climb in Railay Beach, Krabi.
2. Climb up to the mountaintop Wat Tum Sua Temple in Krabi, Thailand.
3. Learn to sail.
4. Climb a volcano.
5. Eat slow-roasted crispy suckling pig in Bali (delicious babi guling).
6. Spend a week with friends at Burning Man in the Nevada desert.
7. Go skydiving. Go skydiving again.
8. Learn to play guitar.
9. Reactivate my French and achieve fluency.
10. Learn to speak conversational Spanish. (half-way there in Colombia 2014)
11. Get in the best shape of my life with my trainer Tom Frearson.
12. Replace my morning coffee with Yerba Maté for at least a week.
13. Get a tattoo with a design from my best friend.
14. Take my dad to eat real Kobe beef at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant CUT in Los Angeles.
15. Spend a whole lot more time with my grandfather and learn about his life before he leaves us.
16. Raise another dog.
17. Take my best friend Patrick to a Daft Punk concert.
18. Share a beer with Carlos Miceli in South America. (Sept 2013 in Santiago, Chile)
19. Settle abroad for at least 3 months elsewhere in Asia, in Central and South America, and Europe.
20. Live at least 3 months in San Francisco, San Diego, and Austin, Texas.
21. Work for a month at a winery—like, in the fields, growing grapes—in California or France wine country.
22. Drive the Pacific Coast Highway in a convertible Lamborghini.
23. Camp under the stars on the beach and see the sun rise. (2009 in Prachuap, Thailand)
24. Participate in the world’s biggest water fight during Thailand’s New Year’s festivities (Songkran).
25. Do a beach photoshoot with a swimsuit model.
26. Go to a shooting range and fire off a Kalashnikov rifle and a Desert Eagle .50 Action Express. More importantly, learn to disassemble & reassemble them.
27. Drive a Tesla Roadster.
28. Take a gondola along the Venice canals in Italy.
29. Ride camel back across the Sahara desert.
30. Take a Serengeti safari in Tanzania and Kenya.
31. Trek through the jungle on the back of an elephant.
32. See the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (twice).
33. See the view from the top of Corcovado Mountain in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
34. Party on Ibiza for New Year’s Eve in Spain’s Ballearic Islands.
35. Go to the Glastonbury Festival in England and see Stonehenge.
36. Participate in the Brazilian Carnaval celebration.
37. See what Mardi Gras and Voodoo Fest are all about in New Orleans, Louisiana.
38. Train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu with my son.
39. Learn to surf (took lessons in Bali 2010). Learn to surf properly!
40. Learn to DJ or mix electronic music.
41. Own a Ducati motorcycle.
42. Buy and restore a 1965 or 1966 Shelby Mustang GT350.
43. Stay in an over-the-water bungalow in beautiful Bora Bora in the French Polynesian islands.
44. Spontaneously walk into the airport and randomly buy a same-day ticket to wherever looks appealing.
45. Drive the Amalfi coast near Sorrento, Italy.
46. Rent a villa on Lake Como or Lake Lugano with friends.
47. Own a small bar or restaurant with live music.
48. Leave any wealth or assets I have when I go out to people who really deserve and need them.

Places to Travel & Landmarks to See

1. The ancient temples at Angkor Wat, Cambodia
2. The Acropolis and Parthenon in Athens, Greece
3. The Sistine Chapel and Vatican City in Rome, Italy
4. The pyramids at Giza, Egypt
5. Machu Picchu in Peru
6. The home of the Oracle at Delphi, Greece
7. The Taj Mahal
8. The ancient city of Petra, carved into canyon walls in southern Jordan
9. The Karnak temple and the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, Egypt
10. The Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza near Cancun, Mexico
11. Iguazu Falls on the Argentina/Brazil border
12. The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy
13. The Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
14. The Banaue Rice Terraces in the Philippines
15. The Borobudur stuppa in Java, Indonesia
16. Gorgeous Zion National Park, Utah
17. Niagara Falls lit up at night
18. Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet
19. Jerusalem’s Old City
20. The Hagia Sofia mosque in Istanbul, Turkey
21. The abbey of Mont-St-Michel in France

You’ll notice I’ve included a few things I’ve already accomplished (plus I come back to update this list every few months, so things are continually getting crossed off).

I’ve also taken Sean’s advice to have a few things that will be easier to achieve, and a few goals I can obtain in the very near future.

I think when you make your own list it’s important to recognize the big things you’ve already done that you’d always dreamed of, and include a few “gimme” goals so you can start off strong and stay motivated.

Of course I expect that my feelings about some items on the list may change throughout the course of my life. I may not achieve everything, some of my goals will change, or I may add new items to the list. But, it’s a starting point and it’s something I can always refer back to to remind me what I want to accomplish.

Of course if there’s anything you can help me achieve, or something you want to join in on, leave a shout out and we’ll talk! 

What’s on Your List?

Take a look at my in-depth breakdown of how to establish meaningful personal and professional goals for yourself in all the important realms of your life. It’s written to help you establish yearly goals, but the principles can be applied to building your own life goals list too.

If you have a bucket list already, share it. If not, take a look at the above articles and get on it! Your time here is short, so remember to value every day you have and make the most of it.