Creating a Reverse Bucket List

From "What's Your Problem?", my Atlantic advice column, this month's winning question is:

Prompted by various books and movies, I've decided to make a bucket list of all the things I want to do before I die. The problem is, I don't know how to limit myself. I have a fair amount of money, and a good amount of time left (I hope), but there are a million places to visit and a million things to do. How do you think I should organize myself in this endeavor?

L.D., Miami, Fla.

Dear L.D.,

I understand why you are flummoxed by the variety of choices before you. My suggestion is that you focus your thinking by making a reverse bucket list of all the things you are positive you don't want to do. I've made a reverse bucket list of my own that you may use as a model. Here are 25 of the things that I hope never to do:

1.    Climb Mount Everest

2.    See any movie or read any book about self-actualizing rich people who climb Mount Everest

3.    See that movie about the guy who cuts off his arm in a ravine that isn't even on Mount Everest

4.    Spend three weeks in a Turkish prison--again

5.    Read The Remarkable Millard Fillmore, by George Pendle

6.    Adopt small African children for ornamental purposes

7.    Obey indoor firearms regulations

8.    Retire to Abbottabad

9.    Take a photograph of my penis and then tweet it

10.    Collateralize a debt obligation

11.    Juice cleanse

12.    Colon cleanse

13.    Ethnic cleanse

14.    Go on an ayahuasca bender

15.    Create a coat of arms for my family

16.    Purchase a Teutonic trophy wife

17.    Play golf with John Boehner

18.    Play golf

19.    Make love at midnight in the dunes on the Cape

20.    Swim with dolphins, because swimming with dolphins means swimming in dolphin shit

21.    Spend a week in a monastery

22.    Spend a day in a monastery

23.    Join LinkedIn

24.    Update my software

25.    Write an advice column