I wrote a post about “Writing Your Life List” back in 2009. It was a useful exercise to put down digitally what I intend to achieve before I pass on from this world.

The original life list consists of the following:

1. Travel business class on flight of at least 10 hours for business/pleasure
2. Eat black ink squid rice in Korea
3. Visit two of the places featured in Japan Hour
4. Work for a local non-profit organisation full-time for 1 year at minimal pay
5. Become the audit committee chairman of a listed company
6. Run the half-marathon successfully and recover from it without injury
7. See my daughter living an independent,  healthy, happy and productive life
8. Obtain a class 2B licence
9. Complete a triathlon safely
10. Generate $50,000 passive income in 7 years’ time
11. Take a train ride from one end of Australia to another
12. Be a published author with sales of 20,000 copies of my personal finance book
13. Be the champion of table-topics contest for toastmasters at district level
14. Speak conversational Japanese
15. Improve my mandarin to be able to blog in Mandarin

Of course, there’s been hits and misses along the way since 2009 and my priorities and goals have evolved over time.

Revised 2012 Life List

The original 2009 list was somewhat random and didn’t have much of a structure to it. It was mostly about things I want to do before I kick the proverbial bucket.

I still want to do some of the things listed but now I have some structure:

Seeing the World

1. Visit major asian cities: Taipei (Taiwan), Shanghai/Beijing (China), Seoul (Korea), Tokyo/Osaka/Hokkaido (Japan)
2. Visit major south-east asian cities: Bangkok/Chiang Mai (Thailand), Vietienne (Laos), Phnom Penh/Siem Reap (Cambodia), Ho Chi Minh/Hanoi (Vietnam)

Health and Fitness

1. Maintain health readings for cholestrol, blood pressure etc.
2. Do regular low-impact exercise (swimming, cycling, brisk walking)
3. Manage stress levels and emotional well-being

Skills and Competencies

1. Become audit committee chairman of listed company
2. Obtain class 2B licence
3. Re-write “Panzer’s Road Map to Financial Freedom”
4. Deepen audit and data analytics skills
5. Practice conversational Thai and pick up a new conversational language (Japanese/Korean)

Financial Freedom

1. Progress towards my targetted investible net worth
2. Diversify income sources

The life list is aspirational in that they are the things I want to achieve and I consider progress when I am making steady achievement of activities that bring me closer to some of them.

Having a life list does consciously or unconsciously channel one’s efforts and activities towards meeting them. It allows me to question myself how the time I spend on an activity would help or hinder me from achieving the goals in my life list.

What is your life list and how have you gone about achieving them?

Share with Panzer in the comments section.

Be well and prosper.

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