Are Bucket Lists Overrated? This Psychiatrist Thinks So.

We live in a world haunted by bucket lists. Consider: In a Stanford Medicine study of over 3,000 people, 91.2% told researchers that they had a bucket list. (Travel and reaching personal goals were the most popular entries on said lists.) A Forbes article from 2019 cited a statistic revealing that 95% of respondents to one survey had a bucket list. And countless articles and books are framed in a familiar “do this before you die” manner.

It’s enough to make you wonder if we’ve surpassed peak bucket list — or if, perhaps, not having bucket lists should be on our collective bucket list. That’s the argument that Richard A. Friedman, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, made in a new article at The Atlantic.

“I have yet to know a patient or friend who, facing the blunt fact of their own mortality, had anything close to a bucket list,” Friedman writes. His argument? That in light of mortality, the majority of people prefer familiar things that they love to experiencing something new that they might not enjoy.

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Friedman doesn’t feel that new things are bad per se. Instead, he argues against newness for newness’s sake. “[O]n its own, excitement won’t bring about enduring happiness,” he writes. “Human beings habituate rapidly to what is new.”

There are plenty of valid reasons to try new things throughout life — including scientific studies that show that new experiences can improve one’s memory. And Friedman isn’t arguing against ever doing new things; instead, his argument against bucket lists is more about embracing one’s passions and connecting more deeply with one’s loved ones. Which seems like solid life goals to aim for, whatever your circumstances may be.

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…