Time Bucketing
Kill the bucket list — assign every experience to the life period that can actually hold it.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 92%
Time bucketing replaces the bucket list with a timeline. Instead of one undifferentiated pile of things to do before you die, you divide your remaining life into periods and assign each experience to the bucket where you will most be able to do it, enjoy it, and appreciate it. Perkins argues you die a series of mini-deaths — the single you, the young-parent you, the empty-nester you — and each of those selves has experiences that only they can have. Raging through Europe in youth hostels is a twenties experience; a classical symphony may only land in your forties. Bucket the experiences deliberately and the aggregate life is far more fulfilling than a frantic end-of-life catch-up that never happens.
Origin
Perkins observed that people say 'before I die I want to X', then arrive at 80 unable to do X, and that wealth-management data consistently shows spending declines with age even adjusting for healthcare. He also learned late that roughly 75% of the time you'll ever spend with your child is done by age 13 or 14 — a statistic that crystallised the idea that experiences have windows.
Core principles
- 01When you do something matters as much as what you do.
- 02You die many mini-deaths: the 20s you dies, the single you dies, the parent-of-toddlers you dies.
- 03Some experiences are non-transferable across life stages — miss the window and it's gone.
- 04Optimising each period optimises the whole life.
- 05The plan is a living document, not a one-time exercise.
How to run it
- 1
Divide your life into buckets
Sketch your remaining decades as discrete periods — 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or life-stage buckets like single, young kids, empty nester.
Pro tip Use life stages rather than pure ages if your circumstances don't track the calendar.
- 2
Brain-dump every experience you want
Write out everything you want to do, from expensive trips to free walks in the park. Charitable, hedonistic, family — all of it counts.
Pro tip An experience doesn't have to cost money — hiking with a friend qualifies.
- 3
Assign each experience to its optimal bucket
Place each item where your health, attitude and aptitude will best support it. Ask which self is the one who actually gets to enjoy this.
Watch out Some things genuinely don't transfer — a youth-hostel Europe trip won't land the same at 50.
- 4
Flag the expiring windows
Identify experiences whose window is closing now and pull them forward. These are your highest-regret risks.
Pro tip Parenting time is the classic expiring window — most of it is spent before your kid is 14.
- 5
Revisit the buckets regularly
Treat the map as loose and living. You discover what you want as you live, so return to it often rather than setting and forgetting.
Watch out This is not a figure-it-out-once exercise; a stale bucket map is the same as no map.
In the wild
Post-divorce, Perkins and his ex argued over who had to drive the kids around. He realised the car was where the real conversations with his daughters happened — they were trapped with their dad and forced to talk.
→ He flipped from avoiding the driving to going out of his way to do it, becoming 'one of the best Uber drivers there was' to capture a time bucket he could never get back.
Perkins notes he wasn't mature enough in his twenties to sit through a classical symphony and appreciate it — but he is now. Meanwhile all-night raving was a twenties activity that now costs him a day and a half of recovery.
→ Both experiences are real, but each belongs in a different bucket — proving that timing, not just choice, determines fulfillment.
Common mistakes
Holding a bucket list instead of time buckets
A single end-of-life list assumes an 80-year-old body and attitude can execute a 30-year-old's ambitions. It can't.
Setting the buckets once and walking away
Values and circumstances shift; the map has to be revisited or it silently stops matching the life you're actually living.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone deferring meaningful experiences 'until later' — especially people planning big things for retirement.
Not ideal for
People in acute survival mode with no discretionary time or money to allocate.
From the transcript
“the when you do it is as important as what you do right in order to get the maximum fulfillment”
“you die a lot of mini deaths the 20s you dies right the singles you dies”
“75% of the time you will ever spend with your kid is done by I think by the age 13 or 14 in the US”
“making sure those activities go in the right time bucket will help you have less regret for that time period”
From the episode
Bill Perkins: I’m Planning to Die with Zero Dollars in the Bank and You Should Too
Bill Perkins