Another exercise which I always had my students do is the Fabulous Fifty list (AKA a bucket list). Now it is fabulous because it is a list of things that you would like to accomplish in your life, not necessarily a list of fabulously difficult or complex things. That is, you don’t have to list 50 grand Climb-Mt-Everest type of things. They can be simple like reading that novel or more complex like writing that novel. Most likely your list will include a mix of simple and more complex items.
For some people it is surprisingly difficult to come up with 50 items. And sometimes my students who were just trying to get the assignment done would list 50 countries they wanted to visit or 50 books they wanted to read (I later imposed some restrictions for the assignment so that they would have to put more thought into it.). There is nothing inherently wrong with such a list, but I suggest that if you find yourself writing down more than five of the same type of activity, that you consolidate them into one category such as visit all of the countries in Europe or read all of the works of Shakespeare.
Start by writing down the items as they come to you. At first don’t worry about prioritizing the list, just get 50 items/categories written down. You can always edit the list later. Once you have your list completed, identify the top ten that you would like to accomplish. Then order your top ten from most important (1) to least important (10).
