Recently I challenged both myself and my wife to come up with 40 before 40 lists. This is 40 things you want to accomplish before age 40. I am 29, my wife is… let’s just say ‘close’. Our 30s are going to have a major impact on the rest of our lives – by 40 we’ll be more set in our ways, we’ll find certain things harder to do, we’ll have a family, etc. So this serves as an attempt to define what we would most like to do, as well as who we would most want to BE, and in especially the latter, this serves as a roadmap for the next ten years.

In my research, I didn’t see a whole lot of these (maybe any?!) from men. I’m sure there are those who have these – I think the avid lifestyle bloggers just tend to be women.

For every 5 or so of these goals, I’ll have a separate post explaining my rationale behind the goals (some might seem rather odd otherwise), any caveats or additional restrictions, and other notes.

Also, if I achieve a goal or seem to be doing well in the case of a continuing goal, I’ll make a new harder subgoal to continue pushing myself further. For example, if I manage to run a mile in 6 minutes, I’ll challenge myself to do it in 5:45, and then 5:30, and so on!

Finally, in the run-up to this full list, I posted chunks of five goals with explanations behind them. Since the original posting, I edited three goals: #9 is no longer visit every state, just double the amount of states that I have visited by 40. #14 is now more generalized and doesn’t focus on auto repair specifically, but now the target amount is three times larger. Lastly, #16 doesn’t have to be create a game specifically, but rather creating anything that interests me and takes a while. There may be future goal edits, but they’ll be along these lines.

And now, the list:

1: Go to Japan
2: Become a father to two kids or more.
3: Memorize equivalent of 5 chapters of scripture
4: Run a mile in 6 minutes
5: Learn to mostly break my habit of self centeredness.
6: Learn to mostly break my habit of palpitation panic.
7: Get larger house, our forever home.
8: Become a full stack developer.
9: Visit 35 US states (in my lifetime)
10: Be a competent speaker of Tagalog
11. Meet a sponsored child.
12. 450 blog posts
13. Travel to the Philippines with my wife
14. Save $3000 by DIY tasks compared to shop work
15. Learn to cook steak
16. Achieve a ‘labor of love’
17. Cook one new recipe a month
18. ‘Master’ one dinner entree (take an entree recipe and tweak it to a point where it really couldn’t get much better)
19. Make croissants
20. Road trip! At least 5 states
21. Make the perfect pancake. From scratch.
22. Visit Israel
23. Become a leader at work
24. Meet a famous person I admire
25. Have a sleeper train ride
26. Pass a 16-footer in DDR
27. Read and finish a book every two months. Should be a new (not already read) topic I can see myself benefiting from.
28. Do a no-food fast for at least two days.
29. Monthly date with my wife
30. Host a party
31. Private
32. Get rid of belly fat
33. Go camping with just my wife (and kids, if old enough)
34. Weeklong retreat. No phones. No big cities. Just me, somewhere picturesque, my loved ones, and God.
35. Complete a ninja course
36. Mentor two people in Christianity.
37. Make $15,000 in side jobs
38. Contribute to an open-source project 10 times.
39. Have my wife achieve x goals from her 40 before 40 list
40. Private

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