6 Questions to Ask Yourself to Get the Most Out of Life

A recent article over at Zen Habits made me think a lot about the motivation for creating a 101 Things list. The 6 Questions to Ask Yourself to Get the Most Out of Life can be seen as a great starting point to coming up with ideas for self improvement on your list:

1. Who do I love, and what am I doing about it?
2. Am I pursuing my dream, or is fear stopping me?
3. Am I doing something that matters?
4. What am I doing to help others?
5. Am I as good a person as I want to be?
6. What am I doing to live life with passion, health and energy?

Learning to Love You More

If you are having trouble coming up with 101 things to do yourself, or would rather participate in something a little more community based, then you might be interested in Learning to Love You More - a project from artists Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher.

"Participants accept an assignment, complete it by following the simple but specific instructions, send in the required report (photograph, text, video, etc), and see their work posted on-line. Like a recipe, meditation practice, or familiar song, the prescriptive nature of these assignments is intended to guide people towards their own experience."

I really love some of the great ideas from this, such as:

• 62. Make an educational public plaque.
• 53. Give advice to yourself in the past.
• 47. Re-enact a scene from a movie that made someone else cry.
• 18. Recreate a poster you had as a teenager.
• 14. Write your life story in less than a day.
• 3. Make a documentary video about a small child.

Eleven internet tools to help make yourself happier

I'm a big fan of The Happiness Project blog. A recent post lists Eleven internet tools to help make yourself happier. Some great ideas here - most of them free services - so go check them out!

Starting: Jan 1st, 2008?

Looking to start your 1001 Day Challenge in the New Year? Now you can join the 101/1001 LiveJournal community:

"This community was created for those of us beginning the "101 Things in 1001 Days" challenge on Jan 1st, 2008. It exists so that we can share our goals, motivate and congratulate each other as we make our way through our lists, and report on our progress.

Everybody is welcome to join this community for the time being, but membership will be closed in early January."

So why not join up and get started on your list making today?

Participate in Gimme Your Stuff

Gimme Your Stuff is a cultural exchange site:

"Welcome to Gimme Your Stuff, the cultural exchange blog where you can swap items of significance to your area with items from others around the world. A conduit for many an international cuisine to change hands. A place where you can trade a newspaper from South Africa, or a CD from Finland. A place where we take no responsibility for anything anyone else does. A place where we are Changing the world with other people’s stuff."

It's a fun idea and the website has some great photos of things people have exchanged.

I spotted this task on Joy's 101 List recently submitted to the master list. Of course, if you are like me and currently struggling to declutter you life then this is probably the opposite of the kind of meme you want to participate in!

Participate in the 365 Day Challenge

Here is a task that requires a lot of self discipline. The challenge is to take one self portrait each day for a year. There is a growing community of people participating in this over in the 365 Day Flickr group.

Once you have taken and uploaded the photo tag it with "365days", and submit it to the pool.

To make things interesting, you can also get some inspiration from the mini challenges list.

Mail a secret to PostSecret

I spotted this great idea for a task in a recent user submitted list from Heather.

What is PostSecret? As described by Wikipedia:

The idea of the project is simple: completely anonymous people decorate a postcard and portray a secret that they have never before revealed. There is no restriction on what the content of the secret must be, only that it must be completely truthful and must never have been spoken before. Entries range from admissions of sexual misconduct and criminal activity to confessions of secret desires, embarrassing habits, hopes and dreams.

It's a great concept for creating a social form of expression. I strongly recommend checking out the mini-movie that was recently created as a tribute to all the people who have contributed to the project so far.

Reduce your worldly possessions to 100 things

On the back of the last post on identifying 100 things that make you happy comes an extreme task that gets to the heart of what it is you need to exist.

I spotted this on the great Unclutterer - Dave Bruno has initiated what he calls the 100 Thing Challenge.

"I have an idea. A spontaneous idea that might change my life forever.  I'm calling it the 100 Thing Challenge. And I’m taking it. Here is how it goes. I'm going to only keep 100 things.  All the rest gets purged. Sold. Given away. Traded ;-) Some how, all the other things will no longer remain in my possession."

This is definitely not one for everyone, but if you are looking to simplify your life to the extreme - it's worth a moment of contemplation. There are a number of variations that you could also consider. eg. Remove 100 things from my life, or as one commenter suggested, make a list of the 100 essential things I need in my life.

Identify 100 things that make you happy.

Welcome to the new home for the 1001 Day Project. I am setting up this site both as a way to help people get started with their own projects, and to encourage people already underway. It is also intended for people who may not be doing a 1001 Day Project, but are looking for ideas and inspiration in setting goals.

Please subscribe to the newsfeed for updates, and I invite you to post feedback in the comments section.

In each posting I will suggest a new possible task for inclusion in a list of 101 things to do in 1001 days. I'm kicking off with "Identify 100 things that make me happy". I spotted this one on 43 Things and thought it was a great task to start this blog with.

Much of what the 1001 Day Project is about, is challenging yourself and in turn finding new things that make you happy. In a nutshell, it is the satisfaction of achieving a goal, multiplied 101 times.

It's always fascinating to find out what makes people happy - invariably it is the simple things in life. Here are some examples people posted:

• Walking my dogs.
• Having a lot of pillows when I go to bed.
• The noise of the rain hitting the window while in bed.
• Japanese gardens.
• The taste of a fresh strawberry.
• Blowing bubbles.
• Unexpected postcards in the mail.

Feel free to post some things that make you happy in the comments.

It's worth taking a little time to compose a list of things that make you happy, and this can even be a great way to brainstorm further ideas for your list.


Recommended Site:
My favourite blog about happiness is The Happiness Project - a blog exploring
theories and ideas around what makes people happy. With excellent regular articles such as Seven tips for making yourself happier in the next hour and Eight tips for how money can buy you happiness.