Things I (may) have done and I think you should try too before you turn 30 because why not, it’s not like you have a list for this anyway now, do you:
- Listen to the discography of any artist/band you have heard of or have started liking
- Read a difficult-to-read book like A Hundred Years of Solitude or Ulysses
- Try to convince someone to share their life with you
- Repair the things you break
- Have a pet
- Do a real-life “unfriend” because you have thought long and hard about what friendship means to you now
- Write personal policy documents for yourself
- Take what someone may describe as a rash decision
- Trust someone to take a decision that impacts both you and them
- Write a poem (yes, it’s bad, no you don’t have to publish it, it’s okay, just write it okay?)
- Start a blog, you don’t have to regularly write though, just start something and we’ll see how it goes
- Do a life review, preferably every quarter and write about how you feel about your work, family, friends, yourself are you happy, what do you want to do etc.
- Set up digital legacy stuff, what happens to your email inbox when you are gone?
- Delete a social media profile, all if possible or at least all the useless ones
- Read what people think is utter trash: romance, coming of age stuff etc, if you already did not do this. Same for music.
- Watch a movie in a single-screen theatre in some remote Indian town (mine were in Ranchi and a small town iN Kerala)
- Do something uncomfortable, push yourself to do something that you wouldn’t have done otherwise
- Learn to listen. Listen to understand and not to respond. Have deep conversations
- Form a routine, do it for as long as you can keep it going
- Jump rope for 2000 times
- Do some long-distance running
- Switch careers
- Say No to things you don’t really want to do
- Track your time, track the books you read or want to read, track the movies you watch or want to watch
- Let go of some stuff that you are holding to for no reason (physical or otherwise)
- Think really hard before you respond. Is this really what you want to say?
- Try Therapy
- Learn to use torrents
- Pay for an independently run app/service
- Complete a MOOC you started but never finished
- Build a PC
- Make an Excel sheet for some very trivial decision
- Buy something expensive that will make your life easier/better
- Drink so much that you don’t remember a few parts of what happened
- Go for a very long walk while listening to a podcast
- Go for a very long walk while not listening to anything
- Share your room with someone (for a night or even a year)
- Make friends with someone who grew up in a very different neighbourhood than you did
- Learn to swim, learn to drive.
- Dance with someone
- Read a Classic (something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read)
- Listen to Jazz
- Get caught lying
- Get drenched in the rain
- Strike up a conversation with a random stranger
- Move to a different city if you grew up in one or if you did not grow up in a city, move to one
- Feed a stray dog or cat and pet the dog (leave the cat alone, it will come to you when it needs petting)
- Create something that you are proud of
- Disappoint your parent/family (preferably only a few times if you had a good childhood)
- Change your opinion about something
- Shake hands with the enemy
- Listen to Im Rauch by Bohren & der club of Gore
- Know the difference between language and communication
- Read a mostly-useless self-help book
- Walk up to the stage and give a speech / Raise your hand to ask a question in a meeting where you are the junior-most person
- Cry. Feel what the phrase “with a heavy heart” means
- Gossip
- Think about what you want to do when you retire (which could or perhaps should, be different from when you get old)
- Be the designated driver for a group of drunk people
- Get into a petty competition with someone on who can drink more
- Keep long hair and/or beard
- Go bald
- Memorise the first 50 digits of pi (and then forget it)
- Solve the Rubik’s cube
- Get into a fight with someone
- Forgive someone
- Forget someone
- Cook something special, something that you will remember for years
- Stay up all night
- Wake up very early in the morning
- Take up a freelance job or a one-time paid gig
- Stay off the grid for four days
- Make a stupid checklist