How to Fast-Track Your Bucket List

Traveling should be more about the memories you make and less about the stress of getting to your destination. We’ve partnered with men’s lifestyle and travel writer Joe Miragliotta from Joe’s Daily to teach you how to make every trip a bucket-list trip.

Bucket lists: Whether written down or committed to memory, the vast majority of us have one. And with new things to experience popping up every day, it seems like there’s always something to add. The trouble is that the time we have to mark them off doesn’t grow too. But that doesn’t mean we have to give up hope. Here, I’ve shared three different tips to help you manage your list so you can start crossing things off in bundles and making room for those new additions.

Take trips that hit more than one place

The first tip might not be a revolutionary one, but that definitely doesn’t mean it isn’t effective. Taking trips that visit multiple destinations on your bucket list is an unbeatable way to watch it start shrinking. Though this usually means that you won’t be spending tons of time in each location, it’s hard to complain when you consider just how far it makes your limited time go. Plus, you’ll be able to decide on the places that may warrant a trip of their own down the line. And a huge bonus to you if the mode of transportation you take happens to be on your list as well. If a cruise, road trip, or a ride on an antique or boutique railway is on your agenda, do yourself a favor and make sure to get as many places out of it as you can.

Go somewhere that offers multiple activities

While your bucket list might ultimately be a motley collection of places to go and things to do, chances are that—thanks to your personal interests—you have small clusters of things that easily go together. And this brings us to our second piece of advice. Not every trip you take has to cover a special destination from your list; it can be just as useful to go somewhere that offers several activities you’ve been waiting to see realized. Been dying to stay somewhere both fancy and off the grid, go heli-skiing, and hiking over glaciers? There’s a place that offers all of that. Deep-sea fishing, bioluminescent bays, and underwater walking tours? There’s a place for all of that, too. Not only will taking the time to find ways to do lots of things in one go be super-satisfying achievement-wise, it usually results in an extraordinarily epic vacation.

Take advantage of every trip

As we all live in the real world, it’s probably important to acknowledge that far from every trip you take in your life is going to be strictly (or even remotely) for the purpose of helping out your bucket list. However, this doesn’t have to mean you can’t use them all to your advantage. Maybe you’re going to a beach that you’ve already been to three times because your family just can’t get enough of it; you’ve found yourself with a free day somewhere “boring” because a work conference ended early; or you are going to a location on your list but it had no activities to go with it. Whatever reason you have for being there, it’s the perfect time to take care of those ventures that don’t have to be done in any particular place—like scuba diving, hot-air ballooning, or even teaching yourself to knit.

So you see, pretty simple. It just takes a little extra planning and the wherewithal to get up and go for it, and you’ll be well on your way to tackling what is arguably the most important list of your life!

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