Hey team,
So, I watched The Life List on Netflix the other night, and it kind of hit me in a way I wasn’t expecting.
The premise 👉 after her mum’s death, Alex (the lead) isn’t left with her inheritance, as expected, but with a mission: to complete the bucket list she wrote … when she was 13 👀
✅ The List:
Be a great teacher
Make peace, not war, with Dad
Learn to play Clair De Lune
Help people and make a difference
Do Stand-Up for once in my life
Get a tattoo
Camp under a full moon
Play one-on-one with a New York Knick
Go all out in a mosh pit
Read Moby Dick. Every word.
Learn to drive
Find true love
The list isn’t strategic. It’s not made to impress people. It’s not made for LinkedIn followers or hustle culture (which I wouldn’t expect from a 13 year old tbf).
It’s simple and sweet.
Written before she got sucked into the “real world.” Before she started living on autopilot. Before life became a never-ending list of shoulds and next-steps.
Honestly, it’s like a gentle slap in the face from your 13-year-old self saying, “chill out, you’re overthinking this.”
(Spoiler alert) And what do you know, she focuses on completing the list for a year, ticks everything off and finds herself again.
That’s what hit me the most.
Isn’t this the point of life. To actually live life and enjoy it?
So what is it I’m chasing with all these side hustles that I keep kicking off (and honestly, then letting die … only to let the cycle repeat itself)?
I started to think about what my list might have looked like at 13. I reckon something like this:
⚽️ Become a professional footballer (Bend it Like Beckham style)
🥹 Make my mum and grandma proud (always a classic - though probs at odds with the above)
💍 Get married and have kids (I’m Indian - this is a given)
🏡 Buy a cool house with a football pitch out back (obvs)
Now, some of those dreams were mine and some were clearly handed to me (can you guess which 😂), but even so, it was definitely not all about being productive on a daily basis and measuring life based on output. And it wasn’t about how many side hustles I could juggle alongside my full time job 🤹
So when did life become all about hustling harder, growth metrics and always needing to prove myself and my worth?
Somewhere along the way, my hobbies stopped feeling like creative freedom and started to feel like proof.
Proof that I was progressing. That I wasn’t falling behind. That I had something to show for myself.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love the self-development world and growth is one of my core values.
But I think somewhere along the road I started to confuse growth with grind.
There are other ways to measure growth.
❤️ It’s in the long conversations with friends that leave you feeling seen, vulnerable and emotional.
😃 It’s in helping someone figure something out or work through something - not because you’re being paid to, not because you can then post about it on Instagram, and not for the praise. But because it’s a nice thing to do, which genuinely makes you happy.
It’s in the books you read, the languages you try to learn (even if you never actually get around to learning them properly), and the random YouTube rabbit holes you go down and get lost in.
🤓 It’s in the building of tiny systems that make life less chaotic (yes, I’m that person who gets excited about [pastel] colour-coded spreadsheets).
🎨 And it’s in creating something, not for the algorithm, but just because it was fun to make.
None of it’s flashy.
None of it’s scalable.
But maybe that’s the point.
Maybe you don’t need a side hustle to grow.
Maybe rest, curiosity, and slowness are growth too.
I’m still not sure how I feel about the whole side hustle thing, but when I was talking this through with ChatGPT (because, why not), it threw something pretty good back at me:
You're not rejecting growth. You're not rejecting self-development. You're asking: what's fuelling me — joy or fear? Autonomy or pressure?
You're noticing that in the world of self-improvement (which you love and thrive in), side hustling has become a sort of status symbol - a way to prove you're doing the work. And that's where it gets muddy.
You start chasing growth through output instead of inner alignment.
You're also calling out something really profound: "You don't need to have a side hustle to better yourself"
That's revolutionary in a world that equates visible productivity with personal worth.
And yet — you're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You like creating cool stuff. It can be energising.
So the real question becomes: "How can I tell when it's growth vs. grind?"
Or maybe:
When does it serve me, and when do I start serving it?
Is this something I get to do, or something I have to do?
Am I chasing something, or expressing something?
You're not quitting, You're just shifting the centre of gravity - from pressure to purpose.
I think I’ve always thought of it as one or the other. I either have to side hustle or I have to just chill out and enjoy life, side hustles be damned.
But, as with many things, it’s not always black and white and there can be a balance ⚖️
I just need to be mindful of when something changes from growth to grind, or pay real attention to what’s driving the need for the side hustle.
So while I probably won’t tick off all of 13yo’s life list (unless I hard pivot to being a professional footballer tomorrow 🧐), here’s a new life list I made the other day:
Learn to rest, guilt free
Go on some day trips / hikes with friends and family
Host a dinner for friends with food I’ve cooked from scratch
I’d love to know what’s on your lists if you’d be open to sharing them 🙏 (either in the comments below 👇 or just by hitting reply to the email 📧 if that’s where you’re reading)
(P.S. Another shoutout to my unofficial proofreader 🙏)
📝 Update Log
📚 Going through a bit of a reading slump, but started Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi’s Last Battle - it’s all about the riots in India in 1984 and the assassination of Indira Gandhi (2/15 chapters done)
📺 As well as The Life List, I also watched Purple Hearts, which was cute
🏃 Finished week 1 of my first 12-week Runna program to cut my 5km time down by 5-10 mins because I’m determined to run a 5km this year!
🧑🍳 Continuing my mission to ‘reduce as much friction as possible in keeping myself fed’ with this recipe this week: Chicken Fried Rice … and it was 🤌
🫶 This was probs a well-timed reminder for myself
⏰ Back on the 0630 wake up hype - and I really, really hope it lasts 🤞
☎️ Also, calling your friends is nice and more people should do it
I feel you… I find myself having to make a conscious effort NOT to turn a new hobby into a side hustle. I just want to channel younger me and make friendship bracelets for all my mates bc it sounds fun!
Love this