Long term readers might recall that in the years before my 30th birthday, I set myself a list of “30 things to do before I’m thirty“; challenges and personal milestones I wanted to hit before I reached 30 years old.

Within months of turning 30, I started writing a similar set of goals and monster milestones to tackle before I hit forty… and then promptly forgot about it for 6 years. 🙃

As I acknowledge my now rapid descent to forty (descent? who am I kidding, I’m definitely getting more awesome as I get older 😎) I decided to pull the ancient list out of my dusty drafts folder and start working on: 40 things before I’m forty.

My original list mentioned paying off my debts (done, accrued some more), running a marathon (done, twice) and achieving £30k gross profit in my business (done, and some) – I’ve removed these to start afresh but there are variations on the new list, and much more besides. It’s not finished yet though, so I’d be interested to hear if my readers have things they’d want to achieve before 40 (or 30, or 50, or whatever!) so that I can crib from your lists. It’s not cheating, it’s just common sense.

Between now and January 2026 (party times) I’ll be blogging my reasons for picking these goals/milestones as well as progress on checking them off. You can follow along with the 40 before forty tag. At least I’ll have an excuse to bloody blog, too.

Lead photo by Matthew Alexander