Buckets – Not a Bucket List

In the weeks following Cassie’s diagnosis we got lots of advice. We weren’t in a position to hear most of it as we were just trying to come to grips with the situation in which we suddenly found ourselves. Brief aside: if you wind up knowing other people who receive a similar late-stage cancer diagnosis hold onto your advice for a while. It’s not that its unwelcome, it’s that you can’t process much of anything those first few weeks.

One thing that did break through though was a breakfast conversation that Dan had with his friend Paul who shared an insight from another friend who had an advanced cancer. That friend advised “don’t make a bucket list because if you do then you are living to die.” This was super interesting to us because we had, in fact, just started a bucket list of things we wanted to do in the time we had left together. But instead we paused and thought about it some more.

On the one hand we totally understood why so many people make a bucket list — it makes all the sense in the world. At the same time, the advice resonated because what happens when you have checked off everything on the list? What then? We found that neither of us wanted to face that question so instead we asked ourselves some other questions. If we don’t want to live to die then what does it look like to live fully right now? How do we spend our time? What matters most? What’s our purpose?

So, one day with all these questions in mind, we sat down at our dining room table with a big piece of paper and together made a list of all of the things that “feed our souls.” The things that make us happy and the things that now seem most important. It was a long list (which was nice) so since both of us are strategists at heart we decided to “bucket” it into categories.

We came up with 13 buckets (something symbolic there since Cassie was diagnosed on Friday the 13th). They included things like time with family and friends, reading, movies and games, food, cooking and wine, exploring new things, and travel. They are not all “buckets of fun” because we included other things like house projects and end of life planning. Some are more important to Cassie, some to Dan, but all of them reflect what feels most nurturing and essential to us as a couple.

And we’ve started to use the buckets. To plan our weeks. To make decisions about what we want to do. To help us prioritize and say no to things. We look at them all the time. We talk about them. Refer to them by name. We fill them up with specific activities. Three of them (connection, health and reflection) we try — with limited success — to do every day. We’ve refined them. Added some and lost others. The point isn’t to have a list but rather to have a better sense of what matters most to each of us and to both of us.

Even before Cassie was diagnosed, we were trying to be more intentional about using our time. That probably made our bucket exercise easier because we weren’t starting from scratch. Our challenge before, though, was that we frequently found ourselves so busy that we lost sight of what mattered most. We don’t have that luxury anymore because every day really matters. That’s why we love our buckets and don’t have a bucket list.