What is a bucket list and how to make one

A bucket list is a collection of experiences, goals and achievements you want to complete in your lifetime. Most start the same way, asking yourself, "If you could do anything, what would it be?"

What separates a bucket list item from a vague wish is specificity. "Travel more" isn't a bucket list item. "Sail a leg of the Clipper Race across the Pacific" is.

Here’s how to make one you can stick to.

Benefits of Having a Bucket List

A bucket list forces you to think about what you want, which is harder than it sounds. Most people can rattle off what they don't want – their commute, their inbox, another Monday at work – far more easily than what they're chasing.

Writing the list down does a few concrete things. It gives you something to measure your year against besides work targets. It gives you a reason to say yes to the expensive flight or the odd career break. And it tends to make people better at conversation. Ask anyone who's crewed an ocean crossing about their trip and you'll get a story full of challenges and excitement.

There's also the benefit of perspective. Circumnavigators who've spent months at sea often come back saying the same thing in different words: that the things they thought mattered before the trip – the promotion, the house renovation, the argument with a colleague – mattered a lot less by the time they reached the next port. You don't have to sail around the world to get that shift, but the best bucket list nudges you toward experiences big enough to produce it.

How to Create a Bucket List

Start messy. Write down everything, even the items that feel unrealistic or slightly embarrassing. You can cut later. What you can't do is generate ideas by trying to be sensible from the first sentence.

Once you've got a rough list, sort it. A few useful categories:

• Physical challenges - a marathon, a triathlon, learning to sail

• Travel - specific places, not just continents

• Skills - languages, instruments, a trade you've always wanted to try

• Relationships and experiences - things you want to do with specific people

• Career or creative goals - the novel, the business, the career pivot

Then get specific. "Sail" becomes "complete Training Level 1 and race a leg of the Clipper Race". "See the world" becomes "circumnavigate the globe", or more realistically, "sail one ocean crossing and see how it feels before committing to more." Specificity is what turns a list into a plan. Vague items get pushed to next year forever. Specific ones get booked.

Importance of Goal Setting

A bucket list without goal setting is just a list of nice ideas you'll mention at dinner parties for the next decade. Goals are what turn "I'd love to do that one day" into "I did that".

The mechanics matter less than people think. You don't need a spreadsheet with colour-coded milestones (though if that motivates you, go for it). You need a goal broken into steps small enough that the next one is obvious. Clipper Race crew don't turn up on day one and sail the Southern Ocean. They work through four levels of training, from Level 1: Welcome Aboard through to Level 4: Remember It's a Race, each one building the skills and confidence for the next. That's what proper goal setting looks like for any bucket list item worth having: a sequence, not a leap.

The other piece is honesty about what the goal actually requires. If the goal is "run a marathon", the goal setting is the eighteen-week training plan, not the race day itself. If the goal is "sail around the world", the goal setting is finding out what the training and the application involve, rather than daydreaming about the finish line in Portsmouth.

Setting Deadlines for Bucket List Goals

A goal with no deadline is a hope. Hopes are pleasant and they rarely happen.

Deadlines work because they force a decision now instead of later, and later has a habit of never arriving. This is where a lot of bucket lists quietly die; not from lack of desire, but because "someday" never had a date attached to it. Give the item a year, at least; a specific year.

External deadlines help more than self-imposed ones. Signing up for something with a fixed start date does the discipline for you. The Clipper Race is currently recruiting for its 2027-28 edition, which means anyone with "sail across an ocean" on their list has a date to work backward from. That's the difference between an item that sits on the list for 15 years and one that gets crossed off.

Tips for Completing Bucket List Items

Book something before you feel ready. Readiness is a moving target that keeps moving. Most people who've sailed a leg of the Clipper Race weren't experienced sailors when they signed up. No previous experience is required. The training is what closes that gap, not waiting until you feel qualified.

Break big items into smaller ones. If the goal is a full circumnavigation, the first real step might be requesting an information pack or joining a Discovery Webinar to find out what a typical day at sea looks like. Small steps keep momentum going when the big goal feels too far away to think about.

Budget honestly, including time. Big items cost money and they also cost weeks or months. Look at what life on board or the race route involves before committing, so the time and cost aren't a surprise halfway through planning.

Tell people. Saying it out loud, to someone who'll ask you about it again in three months, does more for follow-through than any app or planner.

Talk to someone who's done it. Every big goal looks less absurd once you've spoken to a person who's already crossed it off. The Clipper Race alumni are proof that ordinary people, not professional sailors, complete extraordinary things.

A bucket list is only as good as the items you finish. The list itself is free. Crossing something off it rarely is, in money, effort, or nerve. But that's also the entire point. If it were easy, it wouldn't be on the list.

Ready to Cross One Off?

If "sail across an ocean" or "circumnavigate the globe" made your list, you’re in the right place. The Clipper Race trains complete beginners to race a 70-foot yacht through some of the toughest water on the planet, and applications are open now for the 2027-28 edition.

Find out what it takes and start your application, or request an information pack if you're still deciding. Either way, now is the time to take the first step to ticking it off the list.