How does Bill Perkins explain time buckets versus a bucket list?

Bill Perkins argues a bucket list pushes experiences to the end of life, when many no longer work. He says each stage of life, from college to single life to young kids, has experiences that suit it and transfer badly to later ones. His alternative is to split life into three-to-five-year brackets and decide which experiences belong in each, so that skiing with friends, for example, happens before friends marry and scatter.

• Perkins and his wife are using the method to decide how long to live in Japan while their son Kai is under five.
• Perkins says a host's cheap cross-country motorcycle trips in his early 20s are a good example of an experience that belonged to one period.

▸In their words

“life is like Tetris. You kind of have to get the order right in order to get the high score and fulfillment.” Bill Perkins · at 36:25 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on My First Million (2026-11-02). Read the whole episode summary →

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