After writing about 101 things in 1001 days at Get Rich Slowly, I drafted my own list of goals to accomplish. It took me a while to convert it to HTML, but I've finally posted it at my personal site. Looking at that list is almost scary. There are some things on there that frighten me. (Skydiving? Hot air balloon ride? I am deathly afraid of heights!)

Have any of you made a similar list? Even if you don't have a list of 101 things to do, I'd love to hear what your goals are.

I once tried making a list somewhat like this, it was more of a 100 things to do before I die type thing. The funny thing is I'm pretty young, and couldn't actually think of a 100 things. But setting a time limit like 1001 days is a great way to give yourself motivation to do these things.

Your list seems like its definately within grasp, all save one. No. 3 listed under entertainment, Bowl 300 on Wii Sports, I do believe that is impossible.

I've begin making a list. The first item on the list is to finish the list!

My personal favorite on my list so far:
Run a marathon in a month

HA! I love that.

I'd love to look at your list, but I'm at work and its blocked as an audio download site .

My goals, such as they are are all travel related:

Take the Trans-Siberian Express from Moscow to Beijing
Go to Outer Mongolia
Go to Uzbekhistan
See the Northern Lights
See polar bears in the wild
See capybara
Go to Athens, Georgia (can you guess my favourite band )
Go to a communist country - I'd better hurry up on this
Take an epic train journey starting at my house (e.g. from my house to Istanbul)

J.D., the scariest thing on your list, as far as I'm concerned, is giving up sugar for a week.

I highly recommend a hot-air balloon ride. I used to have a friend who volunteered every year at the Albuquerque balloon fiesta, and one year I took a vacation there and helped out. After four days of getting up at 4am to prep our crew's balloon and work the lines, the owner of the balloon pointed at me just before launch and said, "okay, it's your turn." It was incredible. Sound travels upward in the desert, and for the first few minutes I could clearly hear the thumping of jackrabbits' feet as they hopped around the creosote bushes below. We climbed all the way up to 10,000 feet, and it was amazingly quiet (when the burners weren't going). We floated over a small airport and watched planes taking off below us. Landing the balloon was a little bumpy, but no big deal. The tradition after a first flight is for the pilot to rub dirt in your hair and then pour champagne on your head, which I endured happily.

Plonkee, I have a funny northern lights story. When I was living in Lincoln, Massachusetts (a suburb of Boston), I walked out to the barn one night to put trash in the garbage can, and looked up at the sky. There was a sort of dark hole at the zenith and big white curtains extending all the way down to the horizon to the north. It was all white and not moving, so it didn't even occur to me that it might be an aurora; I just assumed it was a strange cloud formation. I stood there gaping for a minute or two and went on my way. The next morning as I was driving to work, the radio announcer said "if we're lucky, we'll get to see another amazing display of the northern lights tonight, rivaling the one last night that was seen all the way down to Texas." I couldn't believe it -- if I'd known I was seeing the northern lights I would have stayed up all night watching them! As luck would have it, the following night was cloudy and I never did see them again.

My northern lights story:

During my junior year of college, I took an astronomy class. Every night I went out to make observations with two other students. One night while making our readings, we saw the northern lights. It was the first (and only) time I'd ever seen them. At first I didn't know what I was seeing, but when it dawned on me, I was amazed. The next day we told our professor, but he was skeptical. "We're at the 45th parallel," he said. "The northern lights are rare." But when my companions told him they were both from Alaska and new very well what the northern lights looked like, he conceded that we had seen them.

I hope to see them again someday!

One year, we got the Northern Lights in Rochester. I remember them being greenish, but you know how memory can twist things, especially color!

I made a list after seeing the idea on your site. I am about a month into it and have only crossed off two things- things I was going to to anyway!

KMK, I think the key is not to be discouraged. I only have two things crossed off on my list, too. I'm going to try to finish all of them in 1001 days, but I know the list is ambitious. If I don't make it, I'll just keep working at them for another 1001 days. It just feels good to have 101, er, 99 goals written down to pursue!

I've been working on something similar but focused a bit differently. I'm trying to put together something using Google Spreadsheets and rememberthemilk.com that will help me keep track of all my goals and my progress.

I figure that many goals can't be accomplished in 1 day, 1 week, or even 1 month. BUT to get to those long term goals you often have to change habits in your daily, weekly, and monthly life habits. This is where I hope to utilize these other tools. Setting up each week a number of daily tasks that will help me reach my weekly goal. Included in my weekly goals should be anything I need to get done to achieve my monthly goals, and my monthly goals should include what I need to accomplish to be successful in my yearly goals.

Once I finish mapping everything out maybe I'll post a link to it here in the forums.

But generally, I think that having these type of lists is what keeps people happy, productive, and sane.

I purchased a 100 page moleskine for my 101 things. Not exactly cheap, but it'll last me all 1001 days and because it looks important, I pay attention to the pages.

I try to use Sundays as my personal renewal day. As part of that, being the end of the month, I'm reviewing my goals. I'll share the shorter-term ones with you as the longer ones become more about who I want to be and I'm not comfortable enough to post that. I have nowhere near 101 but I'll spend more time adding to it.

So this year I want to:
Get a $5,000 salary raise.
Develop two profitable web sites.
Get a part-time teaching job.
Develop an effective daily routine.
Start volunteering somewhere.
Average reading a book a week.
Learn two blues guitar books well.

Andrew