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Bucket List 101
I found myself thinking about the idea of a bucket list, and I began to wonder whether most bucket lists are actually about living well or about consuming experiences. Many of the lists one sees are really lists of places to visit, restaurants to eat in, or things to try once. That might be enjoyable, but it does not necessarily feel like a way of thinking about a life as a whole. It seems to me that a more useful way to think about a bucket list might be to treat it as a rough plan for the kinds of experiences, work, relationships, and contributions that might make a life feel complete when one looks back on it.
I started to notice that many of the things people regret later in life are not things they did, but things they never quite got round to doing. Research on regret suggests that people often regret inaction more than action, especially in areas such as relationships, education, travel, and personal projects (Gilovich & Medvec, 1995). That makes me think that a bucket list might really be a way of noticing what one keeps postponing. The unfinished projects and unattempted journeys may carry more emotional weight than the mistakes.
I also find myself thinking about what people say near the end of life. The common regrets are not usually about not owning enough or not travelling first class. They are more often about working too much, not keeping in touch with people, not expressing feelings, and not living in a way that felt true to oneself (Ware, 2012). Whether or not every example is reliable research, the pattern feels believable. It suggests that relationships, meaningful work, and honesty with oneself might matter more than spectacular experiences.
This connects with broader ideas about meaning in life. Frankl argued that meaning often comes from work, love, and the way one faces difficulty rather than from comfort or pleasure alone (Frankl, 2004). More recent psychology, such as Seligman’s work on wellbeing, also suggests that a good life tends to include engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment, not just enjoyment (Seligman, 2011). When I think about this, it makes sense that a bucket list might include journeys, creative work, learning, important conversations, and some form of contribution that lasts beyond one’s own lifetime.
So perhaps a bucket list is not really a list of things to do before death. It might be better understood as a list of things that might help one live more deliberately now. It could be less about excitement and more about direction. In that sense, the list is not really about the future at all. It is really a way of deciding how to live the present.
References
Frankl, V. E. (2004). Man’s search for meaning. Rider. ISBN 9781844132393
Gilovich, T., & Medvec, V. H. (1995). The experience of regret: What, when, and why. Psychological Review, 102(2), 379–395. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.102.2.379
Seligman, M. E. P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. Free Press. ISBN 9781439190760
Ware, B. (2012). The top five regrets of the dying. Hay House. ISBN 9781848509993
Practice, reflective practice, and experience are often treated as if they mean the same thing, but they refer to different processes. Confusion between them leads to the assumption that time spent doing a job automatically leads to improvement or professional wisdom. This assumption is not supported by research in professional learning.
Practice refers to the repeated performance of a task or activity. Through practice, a person may become faster, more accurate, or more confident. Practice often involves small adjustments based on feedback. For example, a photographer may adjust exposure, a builder may refine technique, and a counsellor may improve listening skills. Practice therefore tends to improve technical skill and efficiency. However, practice alone does not necessarily lead to deeper understanding or better judgement. A person may repeat the same actions for many years and become highly efficient, but still make poor decisions or fail to consider wider consequences.
Experience is often used to mean time spent in a role or occupation. In everyday language, an experienced person is someone who has been doing something for a long time. This definition is based on duration rather than learning. Experience in this sense does not guarantee improvement, reflection, or professional growth. It simply indicates exposure to situations over time. Someone may have twenty years of experience, but it may in reality be one year of experience repeated twenty times. Experience therefore describes exposure and duration, not necessarily learning or improvement.
Reflective practice is different from both practice and experience. Reflective practice involves deliberately thinking about what happened, why it happened, what assumptions were made, and what could be done differently next time. It includes questioning one’s own decisions, values, habits, and professional context. Reflective practice therefore involves analysis, self-awareness, and change. It turns activity into learning. Without reflection, practice becomes repetition and experience becomes time served. With reflection, practice becomes learning and experience becomes professional development.
Donald Schön argued that professionals improve not simply by doing their work, but by reflecting on their work both during and after action (Schön, 1983). David Kolb also argued that learning occurs through a cycle of experience, reflection, conceptualisation, and experimentation rather than through experience alone (Kolb, 1984). More recent writing on reflective practice emphasises critical reflection, which includes questioning power, culture, values, and professional assumptions rather than simply improving technique (Brookfield, 2017).
We can therefore distinguish the three terms in a simple way. Practice improves skill. Experience represents time and exposure. Reflective practice produces learning and professional growth. A professional may have practice without reflection, and experience without improvement. Reflective practice is the process that turns activity and experience into learning.
This distinction is important in professions such as teaching, counselling, healthcare, and management, where time served is often treated as evidence of competence. Reflective practice challenges this assumption and argues that professional growth depends not on how long we have been doing something, but on how carefully we think about what we are doing and why.
References
Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Becoming a critically reflective teacher (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass. ISBN 9781119049707. Source confidence – Verified via ISBN.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Prentice Hall. ISBN 9780132952613. Source confidence – Verified via ISBN.
Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books. ISBN 9780465068783. Source confidence – Verified via ISBN.