The 10 Categories of Life
A blank page is overwhelming; ten categories make your list writeable.
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 90%
Nemtin's answer to the blank-page problem is to stop asking for 'your list' and start asking for your list within ten defined categories of life. Adventure and travel is only one of them — the others cover mental health, physical health, relationships, giving back, intellectual, financial, professional and material goals. Separating the list this way makes the writing tractable and exposes the categories you have quietly neglected. It is the structural basis of his Bucket List Journal. The framework treats the bucket list as a reflection of the true self, which requires breadth to be accurate.
Origin
Nemtin says that on the original 2006 road trip they had no idea about any of this — they were just going out to tackle dreams and help people. The category structure emerged from a decade-plus of speaking and studying why some people go after their goals and most do not, and became the architecture of the Bucket List Journal published the week of this interview.
Core principles
- 01A blank piece of paper produces nothing; a category prompt produces answers.
- 02A bucket list is a reflection of your true self, not an adventure log.
- 03Adventure travel is one of ten categories, not the whole list.
- 04Coverage across categories is what makes a list honest rather than performative.
How to run it
- 1
Reject the blank page
Do not sit down and try to write 'your list.' Nemtin is explicit that a blank piece of paper is overwhelming and that is why lists never get written.
- 2
Write into each of the ten categories
Work category by category: adventure/travel, mental health, physical health, relationships, giving back, intellectual, financial, professional, material. Answer within the narrow frame rather than the infinite one.
Pro tip The narrower the prompt, the faster real answers come. 'What do you want to learn?' beats 'what do you want?'
- 3
Audit the empty categories
The categories you left blank are the diagnostic. An empty mental health or relationships column while adventure overflows is telling you where your attention is not.
Watch out Do not force filler items into an empty category. An honest blank is data; a fabricated goal is noise.
In the wild
The original Buried Life list mixed categories without naming them — make a TV show and write a New York Times bestseller (professional), pay off our parents' mortgage (financial and relationship), go to space and streak a field (adventure), sit with Oprah and have a beer with Prince Harry (intellectual and social). Only later did Nemtin reverse-engineer why the list worked: it spanned life rather than sitting in one lane.
→ The category structure became the architecture of the Bucket List Journal, which asks readers to write into all ten deliberately rather than stumbling into breadth by luck.
Common mistakes
Treating the bucket list as an adventure list
Nemtin: 'it's not just skydive and go to Europe, that's one of 10 categories of your life.' Collapsing the list into adventure produces a list that cannot reflect your true self and therefore cannot prevent the deathbed regret it is meant to address.
One long undifferentiated list
Without categories the exercise reverts to the blank page it was meant to solve, and you write whatever is top of mind rather than what is actually important across your life.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone who has tried to write down their goals and found the exercise either overwhelming or embarrassingly shallow.
Not ideal for
People who already have a clear, well-balanced set of written goals and need execution help instead.
From the transcript
“Really a bucket list is just a reflection of your true self, that's the way I look at it.”
“It's not just skydive and go to Europe, that's one of 10 categories of your life.”
“You look at a blank piece of paper and like what's your list and it's overwhelming and that's why I think it's important to separate…”
From the episode
Ben Nemtin: Badass Bucket Lists
Ben Nemtin