The list

I retired with a list. A real one — dozens of entries in Notion, everything I might do once nobody owned my time. I'd written it while the exit was still a number on a screen, and when I landed in Lisbon, it was waiting.

The list wasn't a plan. It was insurance. I've written about the blank page — the morning after the number, when the freedom you spent years buying turns up empty-handed. The list was what I'd scribbled on mine in advance.

You don't know in advance what sticks. You can't. The person writing the list still has a job. The person reading it has all the time in the world. They're not the same person — and the second one gets the vote.

So I graded the entries as I went: try a thing, give it an honest mark, move on. The grades stay between me and the list. What I'll tell you is the shape of the results: most entries died.

That's not the list failing. That's the list working.

The winner I never bet on was cooking — the one that took over, from getting good at it to building my own dishes. The list knew before I did.

What else survived? Rock climbing. Padel. Improv comedy, of all things. And the pattern behind them is embarrassingly simple: the ones that stayed, stayed because they were fun. Not strategic, not good-for-me-in-ten-years. Fun. It turns out fun is a complete reason.

Dancing died fast. It sounded exactly right from inside a working life — the kind of thing you swear you'll do when there's time. Then there was time. It was fun to try, it was a challenge, and it wasn't mine. The list is a menu, not a to-do list — you're allowed to send plates back.

A good share of the list went the same quiet way: tried, dropped, no drama. I expected that. If everything you write down sticks, you didn't make a list of things to try — you made a schedule.

The entry that would have made the old me laugh: a routine. Workouts at fixed times. Actual bedtimes. After a decade of whatever, whenever, I didn't expect to enjoy structure — and here's the report: the luxury isn't escaping structure. It's choosing it.

If your own exit is still years out, start the list now — it costs nothing and it can't be started too early. My honest advice once you're close is in the guide: work out what you want the life to be, and check whether you actually know.

Write everything down, including the dumb entries. Especially the dumb entries. The list isn't a promise. Nobody's grading you but you.

It's also the cheapest piece of retirement planning you'll ever do. The spreadsheet knows when you can leave. The list is the only document that knows why.

Four years in, mine has done its job: it caught the surprises I'd never have planned, and it let the wrong ideas die cheaply. So — what's at the top of yours, and which entry do you already suspect won't survive the first month?