Dare to Create a List of 100 Things You Want
One Saturday in 2022, I challenged myself to come up with a list of 100 things I want. Here’s what happened. Plus, what I’ve learned since.
“His politics are unknowable.”
Photo of Terry the rescue pug taken by author.
The inspiration
I was intrigued by the idea to make the ‘100 wants list’ from a podcast episode by Rich Litvin. He apparently has all his new clients do it. As a coach myself, I wanted to understand why.
What new insights could this bring?
Making the list
To be honest, coming up with a list of 100 wants took much longer than I anticipated. I’d get stuck, take a break, new wants would pop up, and I added them to the list. I also enlisted the help of friends to remind me of things I’d mentioned in the past.
There were many repeats and wants that turned out to be parts of other things—a luxury bathtub or hardwood floors are both things that are part of my definition of ‘a small, gorgeous detached house’. I counted these as three separate things. Even so, my final list was closer to 90.
It was easy to come up with the first twenty or so wants. The middle sixty stretched my brain. And the final twenty was when the real challenge began.
The insightful part was what happened next.
Making sense of my desires
Once I had made my list in Excel, I added category labels to each item. I came up with the labels spontaneously, based on what made sense to me.
Here are my emergent categories (yours will be different):
Purchases: tangible things a person could buy, such as a powerful, eco-friendly car, a fire pit, a large spinning globe—I’ve always wanted one of these!
Ego and vanity: this category included things like laser eye surgery or more tattoos
Quality of life: here were the things that would make my life better and more enjoyable, such as quick access to a surfing beach, a lush and sunny garden, two pets
Success: My measures of success were grouped here, including my income and savings goals, speaking on the TED stage, and writing a best-selling book
Relationships: this category included having close friends nearby, going to regular poker and game nights, hosting and attending dinner parties, having deep, nerdy conversations with interesting thinkers
Support: this is where I put all the services that could help me be better, such as having a personal physiotherapist for my chronic illness, a gym membership with a pool, and other coaches and mentors to fill out my personal board of directors
Travel: Oh, the places I will go! Visits to Thailand, Greece, Amsterdam, seeing the Pyramids and more
Health: all the things you’d imagine, such as having more energy, sleeping better, and getting fit
Learning: this is how I labelled all my wants around gaining skills — French fluency, singing, improv, becoming a great freestyle dancer
Worldly: this included massive wants like gun control, universal healthcare, stopping climate change
Unrealistic: these are things I want even though they can never come to pass. Being two inches taller. Wishing I’d held onto the Apple stock I bought in the late 90s. My friend not dying
After I labelled all my wants, I sorted the list by category. This allowed me to view similar items together, seeing what they looked like in context. ‘Professional kitchen’ and ‘Feeling inspired, motivated, and hopeful about something every day’ are both part of what Quality of Life means to me.
What do I do about that?
More prioritization was required. I went through the list again, considering each item on its own. If I truly wanted it, I wrote ‘Fuck Yeah!’ next to that item.
My Fuck-yeah-filtered list of wants now contained 57 things, organised into eight categories. Yep, three categories disappeared entirely when I did this step.
What your list says about you (and why you should do this challenge)
The real reason to make a list is to get clarity about your desires; what you want and how much you want it.
Your list reveals what’s important to you (your values) and what actions you might want to take next (your goals and aspirations). This is insight you can’t get from anyone else.
It’s necessary to do the categorization step because the actual prevailing themes are probably not what you think they are. Categorizing gives you a sense of the things you want in the context of your other wants. That is, wanting usually happens in isolation and is often experienced that way. We have a craving and get a pizza. We can’t wait to play the new game, so we download it. We have a desire for connection and we call a friend.
What happens when we put all of these things side by side? What sense do we make of it then? How does that desire shift or change?
Another reason to do the ‘Fuck Yeah!’ step is to separate the good stuff from the filler — all the superficial or societal wants, the ‘shoulds’, the desires we’ve outgrown or held onto for too long.
For me, my list showed that there were only a handful of things I wanted to purchase outright. I thought there’d be more.
What I actually had the most of were Quality of Life, Health and Success desires. Was I actually prioritizing these wants in my daily life?
Looking at it this way, I could easily see that I was pouring energy into my success, but somewhat neglecting my health wishes (and needs). I mentally prioritized some of my Fuck Yeah! health goals and immediately made some changes to my daily routines.
Incidentally, doing this is helping me with my desire to ‘feel inspired, motivated, and hopeful about something every day’
“Most of us are afraid to want things.
That’s because wanting things forces us to choose between two unpleasant options: ignoring our desires or taking action to achieve them.”
— Quote from the Jungle Gym newsletter
I challenge you to face your desires. Don’t be afraid to want. It offers motivation, fulfillment, and achievement. The other way lies boredom, frustration, and stagnation.
How to do the 100 wants challenge
In four simple steps:
Step 1. Creating your list:
Come up with a list of 100 things you want.
Congrats, you did the hard part! You’re basically done. But keep going — the magic happens during steps 2–4:
Step 2. Labelling your list:
Add category labels to each item. You decide what labels and how many.
Step 3. Sense checking your list:
Review each item on the list and ask yourself,
“Is this a Fuck Yeah!?”
Step 4. Noticing and next steps:
Reflect on what your list shows you. Are there any actions or goals you want to create?
A summary of my 100 wants challenge
Here are my top three takeaways and what I’ve learned in the years since making my first list:
What I discovered about myself
I’m pleasantly surprised by what I truly want. I’m not the superficial consumer I fear I am (or will become). My values are orchestrating my desires. I didn’t even realize this, but the discovery strengthens my self-belief.
What I discovered about desire
Wanting can be a big motivator. It can also show you where the work is. My unrealistic wants highlight what I’m working on accepting (about myself and others). Worldly wants point to a greater vision and mission. The relationship, quality of life, and learning wants say something about how best to organize time and efforts.
Whether it’s a fleeting craving, a deep longing, or a strategic goal, our desires — when meaningfully considered — can help us lead the way to our fulfillment.
What I will change as a result
A lot of the wants on my list are actually achievable. As a result, both my long- and short-term goals have been shaken up (in a good way). With my intentions clarified, it’s a lot harder to continue pursuing things that don’t truly excite me. It’s easier to make changes to chase the things that do.
What’s different now
I’ve offered this challenge to many people I’ve worked with. Through sharing our results, and the insights we discovered from them, I’ve come up with some helpful observations about the 100 wants challenge:
This takes more time than you think. Most people I’ve spoken with have an initial burst where they can list 20 or more items easily, then they get stuck. My first list took a weekend. Realistically, it took much longer, as living documents do.
It may be harder than you expect. That may be ok, but like any resource or activity, if it starts to feel like painful homework or is otherwise not useful, it’s probably a good idea to stop. Not everything is for everybody.
You may not get to 100. That’s ok too. One hundred is an arbitrary number. If I told you to list 100 spoken languages you’ve heard of, you might initially think it’s an easy task. You’d be hard-pressed to name thirty. I’m a trained linguist and I can’t even do more than 50. For reference, there are over 7,000 living languages spoken in the world today. Relatedly, there are a lot of things you could want, but it’s not a failing if you can’t name them all.
Kitchen with one usable plug socket and minimal space (cabinets contain boiler, clothes washer, etc.)
Revisiting my lists over time, I see how my wants have changed. I see how wanting changes. My basic needs shift, and things I want come from different places.
My aspirations are evolving, too. Renting an impossibly small house with a minimally functional kitchen impacts how I eat and live.
Wanting an air fryer isn’t just for the convenience of following the more prominent instructions on the backs of packages, it’s a symbol of spaciousness, as it presupposes a kitchen that can store it.
What the world wants
My relationship to the things I want is growing in interesting ways as well.
The globe has always been on my list, in my top 20. Like an air fryer, the globe takes up real estate in a room. Preferably the kind of room with hardwood floors. And perhaps a Chesterfield.
But the globe is a construct. Unlike an air fryer, it’s not a transactional want, where you source the best one for your needs and budget, then go out and buy it (and decide where to store it when not in use).
The globe is meaningfully different. One thing that’s held me back from buying even the smallest version of one has to do with time and history. What even is a globe? It gets outdated the second it’s printed.
I want a globe, not for the sake of having one, although that’s true. A globe needs a room to breathe in. To spin. It needs other centerpieces, like a sizeable chair. From which a single arm hangs, casually reaching out to give it a whirl.
The globe wants a place where time moves differently. Bets are won and lost. Proper holidays — not quick getaways — are planned.
The globe sits atop a rug, atop wide wood plank floors, atop subfloor, and good bones. Adjoining rooms are of requisite size. They demand large panes of glass. And a worthy view. Maybe of water. Not the kind falling from the sky.
I don’t want a globe. I want the world.
Or at least a beautiful and accurate representation of it. I’m hoping it exists.
My wish for you
Be intentional about what you want. This is a great way to start.
An older version of this article first appeared on Medium in July 2022.
