Life Checklist

What it is

Life Checklist is sixty-six boxes for an average human life, from being born to turning a hundred, with everything in between: learn to ride a bike, see snow, get a credit card, start driving, buy a house, watch your kid graduate, retire, plant a garden. Each has an emoji and a checkbox. You tick what you have done and a counter at the bottom tells you how many of the sixty-six you have done, which is more unsettling than it sounds.

How to play

Scroll down the grid and tick honestly. The list is in rough order, so the early ones go fast and the later ones slow down. Read the counter at the bottom, feel something, and then read the list again from the top as a to-do list rather than a scorecard, because that is the part that stays with you. It takes two minutes to complete and considerably longer to stop thinking about, which is the point.

What makes it different

It is a very plain page and that is the trick. There are no instructions, no personality quiz and no result screen with a badge, just a list that starts with milestones you had no say in and ends with ones you might never reach. The middle section, where work and love and money all arrive at once, is where the ticking slows.

Why it is on Bored

Two minutes of ticking boxes, then a longer stretch of thinking about the ones you left blank. The page has no result screen and no badge, which is exactly why the counter lands: it is a plain tally of a life so far. You fill it in alone, show it to someone, and come away with a very good argument for doing one of the small ones this year.

Tips

• Be honest, nobody is checking
• Read it once as a scorecard and once as a plan
• Do it with someone else and compare, the gaps are the conversation
• Some boxes are one weekend away, pick one

FAQ