My Impossible List

I’ve often had goals - sometimes in my head, at other times written down - but until now I’ve had no central place that I’ve stored them. Inspired by Thomas Frank’s “Impossible List”, I’ve decided to change that.

Apparently an “Impossible List” is different to “just a bucket list” in that it is “an ever-evolving list of experiences that build upon each other, help others as well as yourself, and implore you to take action.”

As I understand, the key ideas differences:

  • It inspires you to take action right now (rather than achieve something further down the line)
  • It’s public (I guess for accountability, and perhaps to help others)
  • It’s iterative (so when you achieve a goal, you may decide to set a further, more challenging, next step)

I’m hoping this list will help me retain clarity and focus, and also avoid the sensation that I haven’t accomplished anything in my life by having a concrete record of the small wins.

So, here’s my list (work in progress):

Professional

Medicine:

  • Academic supervisor at Cambridge University (Achieved October 2016)
  • Qualify as a doctor (Achieved July 2017)
  • Obtain Full Registration with the UK General Medical Council (Achieved July 2018)
  • Feel competent and confident as a doctor (Achieved June 2018)
  • 10 academic publications (Achieved March 2020)
    • 20 academic publications
  • First author in a top tier journal (Nature / NEJM / Lancet / etc)
  • Complete medical specialty training

Technical:

  • Earn money through freelancing in a technical role (Achieved July 2020)
  • Get a full-time job in a technical role (Achieved June 2020)
  • Create a browser extension
  • Publish a Python package

Entrepreneurial:

  • Start a digital health company (Achieved Jan 2022)
    • Successfully raise a seed funding round
  • Author a patent
  • Be on ProductHunt products/hackers of the year shortlist

Other/Mixed:

  • Become a professor

Physical

  • Play basketball for the University of Cambridge (February 2014)
    • Starting five for a full season (May 2015)
    • Play for the 1st team (November 2016)
    • Get a Blue
  • Bench press 5x100kg (Achieved October 2019)
    • Bench press 5x120kg

  • Get laser eye surgery (Achieved March 2019)

  • Learn to fight

  • Represent UCL in a fighting sport

  • Learn to dance
  • Run a half-marathon

Learning

  • Get an MBA
  • Grade 8 Piano
  • Get a PhD (in a subject that I choose)

Languages:

  • Certified A2 Spanish [By September 2020]
  • Certified B1 German

Programming:

  • AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (Achieved May 2020)
    • AWS Certified Developer
  • Competent with PySpark
  • Execute a serverless project on AWS Lambda

Creation

Writing:

  • Write 100 blog posts
  • Self-publish a book (December 2017)
    • Publish another book
    • Audiobook version of a book I’ve written
  • Take a course in long form writing (Ribbonfarm, Write of Passage or alternative)
  • Earn £100/month from Medium blog posts
    • Earn £250/month from Medium posts in a month that I don’t post an article
  • Write an article for Forbes

Videos:

  • Create 100 YouTube Videos [by end of 2020]
  • Gain 100 YouTube Subscribers (Achieved March 2020)
    • Gain 500 YouTube Subscribers (Achieved July 2020)
    • Gain 1,000 YouTube Subscribers
    • Gain 100,000 YouTube Subscribers
  • Create an online course about Machine Learning for Medicine
  • Create 5 reflective essay videos

Tech:

  • Build a webapp/app with 100+ users

General/Mixed:

  • 1,000 email newsletter subscribers
  • Give a TED talk
  • Create a network of machine learning-savvy doctors
  • Start a podcast
  • Record a rap album
  • Learn to draw
  • Average 1,000 monthly website visitors for 3 months running (Feb 2021)
    • Average 10,000 monthly website visitors for 3 months running

Financial

  • Pay off my student loan
  • Earn £1000 in a month through time-independent work (“passive income”)
  • Buy my first home (November 2020)
  • Have a garden office
  • Have a house with a basketball hoop
  • Take the pledge

Personal

  • Have a strong relationship with my partner
  • Be a great dad to my daughter
  • Home-school my daughter

Travel/Experience

  • Go to Everest base camp (Achieved July 2013)
  • Live in another country outside of the UK
  • Climb Kilimanjaro

Experimental

  • 99 days without Facebook (Completed Jan 2017)
  • Be vegetarian for a year (Completed in 2018)
  • Meditate 1 hour+ per day for one month (Completed July 2018)
  • Spend one month without internet

Life Goals

  • Start a hospital
  • Start a digital health start-up
  • Become a psychotherapist
  • Build my own home
  • Meet the Dalai Lama
  • Meet Elon Musk
  • Meet Jeff Bezos