Mark Twain once said, “The two biggest days of your life are the day you’re born, and the day you find out why”.

I’ve had four days.

The day I was born was obviously rather significant from a personal, existential perspective. The second day was the day I found out my father had prostrate cancer. The third day was when I watched a TED talk called “Before I Die I Want To…” by Candy Chang. And the fourth day was when I sat down and wrote my bucket list.

But right now I want to quickly mention how quickly one hour – or even one minute, one second – can change your life. For me it was 60 hours. And the lessons I’ve learned and the life I’ve lived as a result is the reason this website exists. To share. So that you can learn what I learned, but under less devastating conditions.

My father is a proud, strong man. He grew up in communist Russia, where emotions equate to weakness and the concept of a “sensitive new-age guy” is the punchline of a joke instead of what women are looking for. But that day – the day they told him he had prostate cancer – he completely broke down. There was nothing but emotion. The word “cancer” is synonymous with suffering and death, and unfortunately too many of us have been touched in one way or another by this disease. For those of you that haven’t been, I genuinely pray that you never, EVER have to deal with the emotional Armageddon that kind of news brings. And so begun the first hour of a 60 hour journey that would forever change my life.

What was immediately significant to me was my dad’s comment that his biggest fear was not being able to see all the things he wanted to see and experience all the things he wanted to experience. Obviously living an unfulfilled life is an incredibly common fear. But for both my dad and for me, it’s a full-blown phobia.

The next day, seeking distraction, I resorted to wasting time browsing content online. Anything except videos of cats was acceptable, although it’s surprisingly difficult to avoid them. But I digress…

In my digital travels I stumbled across a TED talk by Candy Chang called “Before I die I want to…”. It’s only 4 minutes long. In summary, Candy Chang turned an abandoned house in her New Orleans neighbourhood into a giant chalkboard asking a fill-in-the-blank question: “Before I die I want to ___.” Just days later the boards were completely full. People were scribbling their biggest dreams and toughest obstacles in any space they could find.

Halfway through her talk a seed was planted in my mind that instantly blossomed and has been bearing fruit ever since. And here it is. My lesson. Are you ready?

“Why the fuck am I waiting to figure out what I want to do?”

We all have dreams. We all have goals, aspirations, pictures on our walls, backgrounds on our phones, promises to ourselves and others – all of them tied to a life we want to create. But why are we waiting so late to figure it out? To write it down? To actually do the things we want to do? It’s ludacris. Mind-boggling, really.

We all say, “You only live once”. And yet judging by people I’ve met and conversations I’ve had, few of us rarely ever live at all.

And so my seed blossomed further. It dawned on me that the corporate world’s mantra of “work first, live second” was bullshit. I had absolutely no time to lose. I sat down and wrote my bucket list immediately.

The first draft had 143 items on it, which was a pretty decent start. Some of them were small and quickly achievable – like donating blood. Some of them were big – like travelling far above the Arctic Circle on huskies to see the Northern Lights. Some of them were even bigger – like travelling to space to see our world in a way few ever have.

Now that I had it written down, I could actually start planning what I was going to do and when. I could talk to people and find out who wanted to join me, what preparation was needed, how much time it would take, and so on and so forth. I was planning my dreams, and making them come true one at a time.

In the last 4 years, I’ve gone skydiving, partied at the world’s biggest music festival, had my 25th birthday in Las Vegas (which was so wild it made the Hangover movie look like a Disney film), sat on top of a mountain and watched the Northern Lights, and ate at the world’s best restaurant. Just to name a few…

But all of that – as incredible as it was – isn’t what changed me. It’s the people I met doing it. The conversations I had. The challenges I had to overcome. The comfort zone I had to regularly leave. I grew more as a person and gained an appreciation of the world as I’d never had. My biggest regret was not being able to share every lesson and moment with my friends and family.

So if you’re reading this, and if there’s just ONE message you can take with you, let it be this: Go home and write your bucket list. And next to every single activity you put down, have a date by which you’ll have it done. Come hell or high water, there will be a little tick next to it.

All of my friends and colleagues always ask me how I can do all of the things I do, and really, the truth is I’m no different to any of them or you. I just promised myself I wouldn’t wait until it was too late to create the memories I want to have.

There’s no perfect time to do anything in life, as my dad found out. He got lucky, because the cancer wasn’t aggressive. He’s been living with cancer for over six years now, and they’re just continuing to monitor him. But him and my mum now spend 6 months of every year travelling the world, ticking items off their bucket list.

So, all that’s left for you to do is finish this sentence: “Before I die I want to…”