The Buried Life Method
Ask what you want to do before you die, then help a stranger do the same.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 95%
Ben Nemtin and three friends coined the method in 2006 after reading Matthew Arnold's 1852 poem 'The Buried Life,' which described dreams smothered by daily life. They asked themselves one question — what do you want to do before you die — and answered it as if money and access were unlimited, producing an audacious list including playing basketball with Obama and having a beer with Prince Harry. The load-bearing twist is the pairing: for every item they crossed off, they helped a complete stranger cross off one of theirs. That reciprocity turned a two-week road trip into a ten-year mission, an MTV show, and a bestselling book. The list itself is treated as a reflection of the true self rather than a novelty adventure log.
Origin
In the summer of 2006, Nemtin was 19 and recovering from a depression that had forced him out of college and off the under-19 national rugby team. He called an acquaintance named Johnny to make a documentary with no subject. Johnny was assigned Matthew Arnold's poem 'The Buried Life' in first-year English at McGill, recognised the theme, and sent it back to the group. They took the name, bought an RV and a secondhand camera, and hit the road from Victoria BC.
Core principles
- 01Thinking about death is the fastest route to thinking clearly about life.
- 02The day-to-day buries dreams — surfacing them requires a deliberate prompt, not inspiration.
- 03Every item you cross off is paired with helping a stranger cross off one of theirs.
- 04Pretend you have unlimited money and access when writing the list, so nothing is pre-filtered as impossible.
- 05Helping others achieve their dreams ends up mattering more than achieving your own.
How to run it
- 1
Ask the forcing question
Ask yourself: what do you want to do before you die? Thinking about death is what makes you think honestly about life — it strips away what you think you should want.
Pro tip Treat mortality as the only thing you can count on. It is the one filter that reliably separates real desire from expectation.
- 2
Write the list with no feasibility filter
Pretend you have all the money in the world and the ability to do anything. Nemtin's original list included making a TV show, playing basketball with Obama, paying off his parents' mortgage, and going to space.
Pro tip If an item makes you laugh at how impossible it is, that is a signal to keep it, not cut it.
Watch out Self-censoring at the writing stage is the most common way the method dies before it starts.
- 3
Attach the reciprocity commitment
For every item you cross off your list, commit to helping one stranger cross off something on theirs. This is what converts a self-indulgent list into a mission that other people want to join.
- 4
Put the list in public
Share the list so people can see it. Nemtin's group found that as soon as they hit the road, strangers emailed offering to help them cross items off — and sent their own dreams asking for help.
Watch out A list kept in your head cannot attract help. Nobody can offer you a hot air balloon they do not know you want.
- 5
Run the loop and let the impossible items fall
Keep crossing off and keep helping. Over time the items you were convinced were unattainable start falling off the list, and the helping becomes the part that means more.
Pro tip Follow the momentum. The items that move easily are telling you where your energy actually is.
In the wild
In 2006 a 24-year-old named Brent emailed the group saying that before he died he wanted to bring pizzas to a homeless shelter — because he had lived in that shelter for two years and food deliveries were the days it felt like someone cared. Interviewing him, they learned his landscaping business ran on a truck that had just broken down, and that he would not ask for help with the truck, only the pizzas. With $480 between four Canadians, they told the story to a used car salesman, who sold them a $2,100 truck for $480 and paid the insurance himself.
→ They drove up and threw Brent the keys. He cried and bear-hugged Nemtin without letting go. The moment became the catalyst that turned a two-week road trip into a ten-year mission.
With no White House connections, the group drove to DC and asked people on the street if they knew anyone inside. They emailed politicians' offices, met lower-level officials, convinced each to introduce their boss, and climbed to the Secretary of Transportation, who called the White House — and produced an official rejection letter. They pivoted to targeting the President's personal aide, emailing daily basketball challenges and showing up at the YMCA at 7:30 every night for a week, then accepted defeat and left. Months later the aide called and gave them a White House tour.
→ On the White House court in rented prom-store suits, Obama walked on and shot around with them for 15-20 minutes. Nemtin: 'I have no choice but to believe that anything's possible because I just proved to myself that this was possible.'
Common mistakes
Writing only adventure items
A bucket list is not just skydiving and Europe. Adventure travel is one of ten categories of life. A list built only from adventure items misses mental health, relationships, giving back, and the rest — and therefore fails to reflect the true self.
Keeping the list private
The list only works when shared. Every item Nemtin's group crossed off came through the help of other people, and that help was only possible because the list was public.
Cutting the impossible items
Nemtin laughed when they wrote 'play basketball with Obama' because it was so absurd — and it happened. Pre-filtering for realism removes exactly the items that would reset your sense of what is possible.
Is it for you?
Best for
People who sense they have dreams but have never articulated them, and who find pure self-focused goal-setting distasteful.
Not ideal for
People who need a tightly scoped near-term execution plan rather than a life-scale reorientation.
From the transcript
“We felt like we had all these dreams but we never even tried to go after them because the day-to-day buries them.”
“For us thinking about death actually made us think about life.”
“Every time we crossed something off our list let's help someone else do something on their list.”
“We also realized that helping other people achieve their dreams meant even more than doing the big things on our list.”
From the episode
Ben Nemtin: Badass Bucket Lists
Ben Nemtin