My bucket list was a guilt list until it got a way out

Somewhere around item sixty, my bucket list stopped being a dream and started being an invoice. See the northern lights. Learn the guitar solo. Walk the coast path. Every time I opened the note, sixty versions of a younger me looked up and asked what was taking so long.

Reach is built by the same people as Idea, on the same rude mechanism, pointed at a different disease. Where Idea is for the things you might make, Reach is for the things you want to have lived — and it knows the failure mode of a life list is not forgetting it. It's the guilt of never closing anything on it.

One wish, live

All your wishes go into a reservoir — places, food, people, craft, whatever chips fit your life. When nothing is live, Reach deals you a small hand and you pull one wish down. It goes live at the top of the screen with a day counter, and nothing else can go live until this one ends.

Mine right now: Walk the coast path from end to end. Day three. Under it, the whole reservoir waits — patiently, for once, because we have an arrangement now. Their turn comes when this one is finished.

The detail that sold me is that every wish carries its own definition of done, written the day you add it, when you're honest. Mine for the coast path is "I reach the last marker." Someone on the beta had Try the best fish in the world with the done-line "I have eaten it," which I think about weekly. Watch the film everyone keeps telling me about — The credits roll. You can't weasel out of a finish line you wrote yourself in plain language.

The way out

Every live wish ends one of exactly three ways:

• Done. The credits roll, you reach the marker, you eat the fish.
• Set down. Not now, honestly — back to the reservoir it goes.
• Let go. The one that makes this a different kind of app.

Let go is the way out the title promises. I had "learn to surf" on my list for eleven years. I do not want to learn to surf. I wanted, once, to be the kind of person who surfs, and that person retired sometime around 2019. Letting it go took one tap and a ten-second window to change my mind, and the app recorded it as an ending, not a deletion. It's still in my record. It just stopped billing me.

A life list where things can only be added or completed is a ratchet. A life list where things can end three ways is a life.

The usual honest footer

No account, no feed, nobody can see your list. It syncs through your own iCloud. Reach is in App Review right now — days away, with luck — at $4.99 once, or $9.99 for the bundle with every HourLife mini app, current and future. No subscription.

The coast path is 84 miles. I'll report back, or I'll set it down and say so. Both count now. That's the whole point.

Choose what you reach for.