The List of 100 Dreams - The August Refresh, Archive Episode

This is the transcript of The Refreshing Leadership Podcast episode: The List of 100 Dreams - The August Refresh, Archive Episode, published on 10th August 2026.

Welcome to the Refreshing Leadership Podcast, and specifically welcome to our August Refresh series. This month I am re-sharing some of our most impactful episodes centred around the theme of rest, rejuvenation, and being a little bit more dreamy.

If you're a longtime listener, there's a chance you might be hearing one of these episodes for the second time. This is actually good news - when I listen to a podcast episode the second time, that's when I actually integrate it into my life. The first time I'm listening at a cognitive, intellectual level, getting familiar with the concept, which is of course super helpful.

If you're listening for the first time, my hope is that all of the episodes this month will help you embrace a refreshing summer, whatever that means for you. I personally am taking a much-needed creative pause, and I encourage you to join me in your own version of that. I look forward to connecting with you in the second week of September, and until then, I hope these episodes help you to really embrace your own refreshing August.

What is the list of 100 dreams?

This exercise is called a list of 100 dreams. It is something that Laura Vanderkam talks about in her book 168 Hours, and she also refers to it on her blog. She has shared a few of her own lists over the years, refreshing them at quite chunky intervals - every five years or so from what I can see.

The idea - which came to Laura via career coach Caroline Kanisa Levine - is to create a completely unedited list of anything that you might want to do or have more of in your life. It is like a bucket list, but with bucket lists people don't tend to get all the way up to 100. The idea of pushing yourself to 100 is to really force yourself to confront the fact that we don't always know exactly what we really want - and in this process, we have to confront that.

How to do it

Hopefully you have a journal that might have some notes pages at the front or back. Some journals actually contain goals or bucket list pages. My current one had a bucket list page - it wasn't 100 items long, so I haven't actually got to 100 yet, but I did fill out everything that was there and then added a few more as they came to me during the day after doing the exercise.

You want somewhere that has a bit of a permanent feel to it. If that's Apple Notes or something on your computer that's easy to refer back to, or even something you could email yourself and search for later, those are all fine formats. I do think there's something good about the written word, but when you type things you can also refine them without it looking messy, which is a nice benefit.

First, decide your medium. If you're going to do it in a journal, I did make sure I had a good pen - I've been picking up some nicer liners recently, black ones that write really beautifully on the page. That's one of those little things the planner community really takes pride in: good pens, the scratch on the page, the grip. These things seem to matter. And then of course, having a good beverage next to you - a coffee or a tea, something warming.

Hopefully you can carve out about 30 minutes. If you've just done a weekly review and you're in that reflective, slightly more inspired space, that's the perfect opportunity to dive into this as almost an extended exercise on top of that. That's at least how I carried it out.

Getting past the blank page

Laura has described that the first 10 to 30 items people add are often travel items. People just tend to have lots of different places they'd love to visit, and that becomes quite an easy starting point. Even for me, the first 10 or so items were travel items - and I'm not always the quickest to plan a holiday.

Then the interesting part happens because you run out of items, and you think: I really can't think of anything. And I think some really interesting things happen here. Items that might have been the subject of a half-conversation here or there - things that never really turned into anything significant - suddenly become really useful fodder for this exercise. You can bring some of those into reality by capturing them on the page, and that can be a useful way of scraping the barrel and keeping the momentum going.

There's an element of just not stopping too much, and allowing your brain to keep going. If you're really struggling, categories can be a really nice thing to add in, maybe once you're into your 30th or 50th item. Typical categories include personal, travel, family, work, and finances. You can also add your own personal categories - in my case, I might add house. You might have hobbies you want to add. It could be related to music - you could have a whole category dedicated to festivals, concerts, things you want to attend. That might help you remember what some of your passions are, and then think about the really exciting things you might want to do in those spaces.

Why a bucket list works differently to a goal list

Once I'd finished the exercise, as I went about the rest of my day, I kept getting ideas. I was like, "Ooh, I could put that down," and, "Oh, maybe I should've put this down," and I went back and added to the list.

One of the really powerful things about this exercise is that when we're doing goal setting or vision work, there's often a pressure - once we've written a goal down, there's a pressure to do all the things to make it happen. The very freeing part of the bucket list is there's no timeframe on it. This is not a 2026 bucket list. It has a much looser timeframe - whatever you want and whenever you want. When the timing is right, these things can happen.

I've talked in a few different places about what timescales do to us. Even when I was talking about doing my Van Gogh jigsaw puzzle - the fact that there was no timeframe on it is the reason why it did actually get done. If there had been an "achieve X by Y date," that puzzle would have had to be tossed. The beauty of bucket list items is that they don't have an expiry date, and so we can be really free when we put them down. But by putting them down, we are bringing them into our world that little bit more, and making it that bit more likely that these things will happen.

How to use the list once you have it

The list becomes a really useful reference point when you're undertaking goal-setting exercises. Once you've got it, you can scan it and do a few different things.

One is to look at the low-hanging fruit - the stuff that is not that hard to do from a cost or time perspective, or that is on the cusp of happening anyway and just needs you to lean into it. On my bucket list I put "do a girls' trip," and there is talk of one right now - I just need to lean in and book my flights. Sometimes the list just makes us that little bit more up for doing the things that are already circling in our horizon.

Likewise, you might look at a few others and think: those are actually quite doable, and I could bring them into my goals for this year. No pressure though, because this is a fun list. It's an exciting list. It's a list that ignites optimism and energy, and the last thing we want is for it to be stressful in any way.

One of the reasons I love this exercise is because it forces us to think about what we want out of life. It's a really nice accompaniment to the goal-setting process, where we can often quite easily rattle off five to ten things we'd like to achieve in a particular year. For a lot of my clients, setting clear objectives is not the hard stuff - they're very good at attaining things. The bit that can be a little harder is all the other stuff that makes life really exciting, makes us feel like we're living a life well-lived, having those experiences, building those memories. That's where this can be a useful follow-on.

Nir Eyal and Laura Vanderkam both often talk about the fact that we do have leisure time at our disposal. We might not have lots of it on any particular day, but we have it - and sometimes the issue isn't whether we have the time, but once we do have it, knowing what to do with it. This list of 100 dreams is a really useful supplement for understanding how we want to use that leisure time.

That's why I think it's nice to have a real mix of things in the list - things that are more attainable and local, and the bigger things that might include an expensive flight somewhere and a more hefty time commitment.

I would love to hear if you give this a go. I think it's a great supplement to a well-honed annual goals list. It's something that's quite nice to review every now and then - once a month or even once a quarter.

If you're in a busy phase of life with young kids, for example, it can feel overwhelming to even contemplate some of those bucket list items and the practicality of them. I feel like that sometimes. I think, "I would love to go here or there," but when I think of everything I'd have to do to make it happen, I get overwhelmed and don't want to do it. What this bucket list does is create a separation between those great ideas and your current self, so you don't feel like you have to do any of it right now - and yet you're not ignoring those things. You're starting to pin down what matters to you, and accessing more of that understanding of what it is that you love to do.

Have a go. Let me know how you find it.

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Laura Vanderkam's book 168 Hours can be found here.

About Maya

Maya Gudka is an executive coach specialising in C-suite career progression and leadership development. She works with senior leaders in major organisations on strategic career planning, executive presence, and building sustainable influence. Maya hosts The Refreshing Leadership Podcast, which ranks in the top 2% of podcasts globally and has nearly 300 episodes exploring the challenges faced by ambitious professionals.