I’ve never got on with bucket lists. Even the word clangs a bit—like an upturned pail dumping water everywhere, messy and faintly tragic. The whole concept has always struck me as a slow puncture of joy, a way to shrink living down to a tidy set of checkboxes. Now that I’m staring at the blunt end of 40, the world is gently, insistently prodding me to produce one. Party invites ask for a theme. Well-meaning mates nudge me to “do something big.” The internet brims with lists of things you absolutely must tick off before the big four-oh. I’ve rarely felt so at odds with a cultural script.
I’m not allergic to adventure. I’ve stumbled into my share of odd, unscripted moments—watching a meteor shower from the roof of a collapsing barn in Yorkshire, picking up swear words in three languages from a retired sailor in a Lisbon bar, and once accidentally gate-crashing a wedding in Mumbai, where I was mistaken for a distant cousin and fed an obscene amount of pulao. None of it was written down beforehand. It happened because I was curious, or lost, or just said “yes” to a stranger’s invitation. The thought of scripting what comes next feels like a small betrayal of that accidental spirit.
The Strange Pressure of the Decade Marker
Thirty was different. Back then I panicked about grown-up milestones: a mortgage, a serious relationship, a career that looked intentional rather than cobbled together from lucky breaks and a flair for winging it. I made lists then—not of experiences, but of deficits. I ticked a few off and the anxiety eased. Now, at 40, the pressure isn’t about lack. It’s about more. More travel, more achievements, more stories to unfurl at dinner parties. The whispered subtext never changes: time’s running out, so you’d better get a move on.
But here’s the thing—I’m not convinced time is the enemy. My career, such as it is, has lurched along in fits and starts: stand-up comedy, writing, odd jobs that require a high tolerance for uncertainty. I’ve learnt that life doesn’t accelerate into a tidy narrative arc. It loops back, stalls, meanders down unexpected alleys. A bucket list assumes a straight line, a finish tape. At 40, I’m more drawn to the scenic route, even if it means I sail past the big-ticket sights.
Why I’m Not Climbing Kilimanjaro
Whenever the bucket-list chat bubbles up, someone mentions Kilimanjaro. I’m sure it’s magnificent—all that thin air and equatorial snow. But I’d rather spend a month in a damp cottage in the Lake District, reading novels that have nothing to teach me, walking the same fell until I know every stone, and cooking meals that are about 60% garlic by volume. That’s not ambition by most yardsticks. It’s not even a decent anecdote. It’s just what I actually want.
I’ve started calling this my “anti-bucket list”—a catalogue of things I refuse to do before I die. Skydiving sits on it. So does learning to play the guitar properly, running a marathon, and visiting any country specifically to gaze at a famous building. I’m not against these things for other people. I just know, with a bone-deep certainty, they’d make me miserable. And misery, at 40, is a waste of perfectly good time.
The Quiet Pleasures of the Ordinary
Instead, I’m pulled towards the mundane. A perfect pint of bitter in a pub that still has a carpet. The sound of rain on a conservatory roof. Watching my niece learn to whistle—badly, with a lot of spittle. These moments don’t make for a thrilling Instagram grid, but they’re the texture of a life. The bucket list, with its devotion to the extraordinary, can quietly devalue the ordinary. And I’ve built a whole personality out of finding the sublime in the everyday.
I think of my grandfather, who lived to 92 without ever leaving the British Isles. He claimed his greatest achievement was growing a marrow that won second prize at the village fete. He wasn’t joking. His satisfaction was deep and unshowy. He didn’t need a list; he just paid attention. I want to be like that—the man who, at 80, can tell you the exact shade of green the moss turns on a particular north-facing wall in spring. That’s ambition enough.
FOMO vs. JOMO: A Battle for the Middle-Aged Soul
You know FOMO—fear of missing out. It’s the engine that drives the bucket list, whispering that everyone else is having a better time, somewhere else, doing something you’re not. At 40, I’m trying to lean into JOMO: the joy of missing out. It’s not a smug, arms-folded refusal to engage. It’s a genuine relief that I don’t have to be on a Thai beach to feel my life holds water. I can be in my flat, eating beans on toast, listening to a 1980s radio drama, and feel deeply, quietly content.
JOMO asks for a certain steeliness. You have to resist the siren call of other people’s highlights. When a friend posts photos of their trek to Machu Picchu, you have to smile warmly and think, “I’m glad they’re happy, but I’m also glad I’m not there, battling altitude sickness and hunting for a clean toilet.” The bucket list feeds a kind of comparative misery. Without it, you’re left with just your own preferences—which is terrifying and liberating in equal measure.
The Midlife Crisis That Isn’t
There’s a cliché that a man turning 40 buys a sports car or has an affair. I think the real crisis is quieter: the slow realisation that all the templates are optional. You don’t have to have a bucket list. You don’t have to have a five-year plan. You can just… continue. Continue being interested in things. Continue being kind to the people you love. Continue failing at sourdough if it amuses you. The pressure to “make the most of it” can actually stop you making anything of it at all.
I’ve been trying to make peace with my own drift. I’m not a shark; I don’t need to keep swimming to stay alive. I can float. Floating is underrated. It’s how I’ve had some of my best ideas—lying on a lumpy sofa, staring at a ceiling crack that looks a bit like the map of Ireland. The bucket-list mentality would have me up and doing, ticking boxes, optimising my free time. But free time, by definition, shouldn’t be optimised. It should be wasted, gloriously.
What I’m Doing Instead
So what does 40 look like without a bucket list? It looks like a quiet commitment to the following: saying “no” more often, without guilt; reading books that aren’t on any recommended list; walking to places I could drive to, just to see what’s in between; and sitting in cafes for hours, watching the world go by—not because I’m a philosopher but because I’m a nosy bugger. It also means accepting I’ll never be a person who gets up at 5 a.m. to meditate, and that’s fine.
I’ve started a small, private project I call “The Unlist.” It’s not a list, obviously. It’s a collection of moments I’ve loved that no one else would put on a bucket list. Like the time I found a 1970s Penguin Classic in a charity shop that still held a bookmark from a previous owner—a receipt for a loaf of bread from 1983. Or the evening I spent teaching my neighbour’s cat to high-five (it can’t, but we both enjoyed the attempt). These aren’t achievements. They’re just life, lived at a human pace.
Letting Go of the Finish Line
The hardest part of turning 40 without a bucket list is letting go of the idea that there’s a finish line. A bucket list implies completion: you do the things, you die satisfied. But satisfaction isn’t a destination; it’s a moving target. I might be content today with my garlic-heavy cooking and damp Lake District weeks, but next year I might yearn for something new. And that new thing won’t be on a list. It’ll arrive, as it always has, because I was paying attention.
I’m not arguing for a life without goals. Write a novel, learn to bake a decent Victoria sponge, finally fix that dripping tap—these are small, meaningful intentions. But they’re not a bucket list. They’re just the natural drift of a curious mind. The difference is the absence of franticness, the lack of a deadline. At 40, I’m slowly learning that the most important thing is to be here, now, not planning for some future version of myself who’s magically more adventurous or successful or interesting.
FAQ: Life After the Bucket List
Isn’t a bucket list just a way to make sure you don’t waste your life?
It can be, for some people. But I’ve found that the fear of “wasting” life can itself be a waste. It makes every moment feel like a potential failure if it’s not productive or memorable. Some of my most treasured times have been deeply unproductive—watching the light change on a wall, replaying a conversation in my head, dozing off during a film I’ve seen ten times. Not everything needs to be an achievement. The pressure to live an “unwasted” life can squeeze the juice right out of it.
Don’t you worry you’ll regret not doing big things?
Regret’s a funny creature. I regret not spending more time with my grandmother before she died, not taking that trip to Japan. I don’t regret missing out on a generic list of “must-dos.” The big things I’ll regret will be personal, specific—not plucked from a magazine article. And I’m more likely to miss those personal things if I’m busy chasing someone else’s idea of a life well-lived. So I try to focus on what’s in front of me: the people I love, the work that matters, the small, strange curiosities that tug at my sleeve.
What if you change your mind and want a bucket list later?
Then I’ll make one. Or I’ll scribble a few things on a scrap of paper and lose it in a jacket pocket, which is my usual method. The point isn’t to ban bucket lists forever; it’s to stop treating them as a requirement for a meaningful existence. At 40, I’m giving myself permission to not know what comes next, to not have a five-point plan, to be okay with the fact that my biggest ambition right now is to finally understand the offside rule. If that changes, it changes. I’ll adapt. I’m not a statue.
How do you deal with other people’s expectations?
Badly, at first. I’d mumble something about “taking it easy” and feel judged. Now I’m more direct. I say, “I’m not a bucket list person,” and I offer no apology. Most people are actually relieved. They’ve been feeling the same pressure, the same quiet dread of another year passing without them having swum with dolphins. The anti-bucket list can be a small act of rebellion, and rebellions are easier when you find your fellow dissidents. We’re out there, in pubs with carpets, reading old books, and not climbing mountains.
Turning 40 isn’t a starting gun. It’s not a checkpoint. It’s just another Tuesday, really, except you get cake and people you haven’t seen in ages send you vaguely panicked messages. And that’s enough. More than enough. It’s the whole thing, if you let it be.