Hey, what's up guys?
My name is Thomas Frank, and today I'm actually wearing this shirt that I've worn in many
other videos for a good reason, because it is high time we talked about the Impossible
List.
I've been in several classes and situations before where students are asked to give their
goals, and all too often I hear this really limited answer where a student will say they
simply want to graduate and get a good-paying job.
Yeah, that's an honorable goal but I think it's really limiting yourself if you only
want to get a high-paying job and you think about nothing else, then what happens when
you graduate, get that job, and find yourself in a life situation you really can't stand?
I think situations like this are easily avoidable if you take the time to think about each individual
aspect of your life outside of your career when you're setting your goals.
That's brings me to my Impossible List.
This is a tool that I've been using for the past three or four years to specifically and
publicly set down my goals and then show when I've achieved them.
Now, I didn't come up with this idea on my own, I actually got it from a guy named Joel
Runyon, who runs the site called impossiblehq.com, and he built his Impossible List when he had
graduated from college and couldn't find a job and today he's used it to run ultramarathons,
helped build schools in other countries, and do all sorts of awesome stuff.
When I found it, I knew I had to make my own.
Essentially, my Impossible List is just a list of all the things I want to do with my
life categorized by type.
I have health goals, I have financial goals, I have professional goals, charity goals,
skill goals, all sorts of goals, and I have them specifically written down and public
on my website.
You might look at my Impossible List and think it looks like a bucket list, and it has some
similarities, but it also has some key differences that I want to go over right now.
For one, a bucket list doesn't really inspire you to take action right now.
It's a list of things you'd like to do and like to be able to look back and say you did
before you die, but the Impossible List is more active, it demands action right now,
it demands a plan, and it's also iterative.
If you look at my Impossible List, you'll see goals on there with lines through them,
but you'll also see sub bullet points beneath them with goals that are similar but even
more challenging.
When I achieve something, more often than not, I'll find something that's even harder,
an iteration on that previous goal, and write it down.
This makes the Impossible List concept fundamentally different from a bucket list because a bucket
list is static and it gets smaller as you go on.
You cross things off and there are limited amount of things left on it.
On the other hand, the Impossible List encourages you to evolve, it encourages you to think
about the journey and keep progressing, keep getting better.
Like I said, I can't take credit for this idea, Joel is the one who came up with it,
and I'm incredibly thankful I came across his blog and stole the idea for myself, but
I have added a couple of extra features that I think make it even more useful.
If you look at the top of my Impossible List, you'll see two extra sections that aren't
on Joel's list.
Number one is the last five completed goals, and I added that there because as a student,
I was always really afraid that I would graduate and get in a comfortable life situation where
I was making enough money, and then stop progressing.
I was really afraid that I would rest on my laurels, stop getting outside of my comfort
zone, stop learning, and I really didn't want this to happen.
The last five completed goals section, lets me look at the things I've done and how recently
I've done the last one.
If there's been a long time since I've completed something, then I know I need to get myself
back into gear.
Having that section there and having it public keeps me accountable and keeps me progressing,
keeps me staying uncomfortable.
The other addition is the top section of my Impossible List, and it's my current focuses.
There, I list the three to four things that I'm really focusing on because I know as somebody
who wants to achieve a lot of different things, it can be hard to pick one or two to really
focus on at one time, and when you're juggling a lot of different things at once, not very
much progress is going to be made.
By listing my current focuses, I can always look at my Impossible List and say, "This
is what I have committed to achieving right now," and if I want to work on something else,
I need to physically edit the list, take the old thing off, and put the new thing on there.
That's an overview of my own Impossible List and to run this video out, I actually want
to challenge you to create your own.
If you want to get started on making your own list and want to do it in a really simple
way, just grab a piece of paper, create your goal categories, write your goals down, and
then make sure you put it up in a place that you're going to see often.
The one thing I'll say with putting it on paper, though, is that you want to leave room
to iterate when you cross off a goal, you want to have someplace where you can write
another goal that's an extension of that first one.
You can also choose to make in a digital format, which does make it easier to edit, and if
you want to do what I did and put it on your own website where it's more public and you're
held more accountable, then I've got a guide on how you can build your own blog on my website,
which incidentally is the longest blog post I've ever written, but you can find it by
going right there or clicking the link in the description.
As a side note, I've also had employers bring up my list during interviews in the past and
whether or not it helped me get a job, it definitely made the conversation more memorable.
If you don't want to build your own custom website, you can easily use a free blogging
platform like Tumblr or you can even put it in a public Evernote document.
I think the two most important considerations when building your list, though, are that
it's in a place where you see it very often, whether that's public or not, and also that
it's easily changeable, so keep those in mind when building your list.
If you want to check out my list so you can get some inspiration, then click the annotation
right there or the link in the description and feel free to steal any of the features
and goals that I have on there.
If you do end up making your own list and you make it public, then I'd love to see it
and you can tweet me the link over at @TomFrankly or just leave the comment down below.
That's it for this video so thanks for watching and I will see you next week.
Hey everybody thanks so much for watching my video on the Impossible List.
If you want to get new videos every single week on being an awesome college student then
click that big, red Subscribe button right there.
I also wrote an entire book on earning better grades, and if you want to get a free copy
of it, click the picture of the book and I'll send you one.
If you want to get links to anything I mentioned in this video, and also some extra Impossible
List examples, then click the orange logo right there to go to the companion blog post.
If you missed the last video, there's a clip of it playing right there you can click, and
lastly if you have any suggestions for other videos or just want to connect, I'm @TomFrankly
on Twitter or you can leave a comment below.
Thanks!