Life Listed is a blog that shares guides and tricks on how to complete a list of things you want to do in your life well before your eventual deadline. Life Listed does this by chronicling Danny Dover’s Life List adventure and sharing what he has learned along the way. In 2010, Danny made the purpose of his life to finish his 150+ life list before his deadline of May 25th 2017. His numerous posts provide tips, tricks and advice on how others, you included, can complete their bucket lists well before they eventually kick the bucket.
You can watch his TEDx talk to see the whole story.
Danny Dover’s Background
My story starts out very ordinary and then takes some very unexpected and crazy turns. This is not your typical self improvement tale.
I was born and raised outside of Seattle, Washington in the United States. From a young age I was extremely interested in the Internet and attended the University of Washington in an effort to study it more formally. I bounced around focuses for a while (computer science, informatics and information systems), took all of the Internet related classes I was eligible for and eventually decided to intern at a local Internet marketing startup called SEOmoz.
This is where things accelerated.
The startup I was working for started to do quite well. I was promoted several times and found myself doing Internet marketing consulting for many of the biggest and well known Internet companies (Facebook, AT&T, Microsoft, Yelp, etc..). I started writing a lot of articles on SEOmoz’s blog and as the business grew, the popularity of my articles grew as well. My articles ended up being read (well at least viewed) well over a million times and I was offered a book deal by a major publisher (John Wiley and co.).
Around the same time, an article I had written was included on one of my final exams at my University. Since it became apparent I was learning more at the startup than I was at school, I dropped out of school to pursue marketing full time. I left and my previous program asked me to come back to speak to my former classmates. Later, I was asked to be a professor at a nearby college and eventually was a guest lecturer at Yale University.
As I started traveling more, I realized I loved the adventure that came with it.
As my job started to suck up all of my time, I started to reevaluate where I was heading. This led to a renewed focus on self improvement and exploration. This turned out to be the single best decision I ever made. My journey through my life list became the subject of this blog.
After I shifted my focus to happiness, I made massive improvements in my life. I lost 60 pounds, ran a marathon, sold/donated my possessions until I owned less than 100 things, paid off all of my debt, became much more spiritual, visited all 7 continents, become a published author, reconnected with my friends and family and became happier than I had ever been before.
As I gained momentum, my journey started to increase in pace. I doubled down on my life list efforts and moved out of the United States. I first moved to Argentina and made Buenos Aires my base for South America. I spent six of the best months of my life there and finished all of my life list items on that continent. Next, I moved to Los Angeles to tackle North America. I spent 6 months there and finished the vast majority of my North American life list items there too. I then moved to Barcelona, Spain to work on my life list items in Europe. I did the same in Australia and Asia.
This blog chronicles my continued journey.
Professional Bio
Danny Dover is a passionate SEO, influential writer and obsessed life list completer. He is the author of the best selling book Search Engine Optimization Secrets and was the co-founder of Making it Click, a marketing training course. Before starting his own company, Danny was the Senior SEO Manager at AT&T and the Lead SEO at SEOmoz.
During Danny’s tenure at AT&T, he increased SEO traffic by 92% for one of the company’s primary web properties (YellowPages.com) and created business partnerships that brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. As Lead SEO at SEOmoz, he helped create a platform (mozscape) that is used today to crawl and download the entire Internet. During the same time, he produced videos and articles that were read and watched more than a million times.
Danny’s expertise has been cited in Time Magazine, PC World, Smashing Magazine and Seattle Post-Intelligencer and has been translated into Japanese, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, German and Hungarian. He has spoken at Yale, the University of Washington and numerous conferences around the world. According to analytics data, Danny’s written work has been accessed in almost every country in the world (currently at 175) and he is scheming ways to produce work for the remaining 17.
Danny spends his time checking items off his 150+ item bucket list (more than 70% of which is now complete) and working to become a better writer.
How Do I Contact Danny?
I try to make myself as accessible as possible. Please feel free to contact me at any of the accounts listed below.
- E-mail – danny@intriguingideas.com (Recommended)
- Twitter – @DannyDover
- LinkedIn – Danny Dover on LinkedIn
- Facebook – Danny Dover on Facebook
- Google Profile – DannyDover+
- YouTube – Danny Dover on YouTube
- Amazon – Danny Dover on Amazon
Interesting Facts
- The first time I ever said a word, I spoke an entire sentence. I said, “Shut Up, Baby” to my little sister who woke up before me in the crib next to mine.
- I once was on my own final exam in college when my professor used a blog post I had written (he didn’t realize I was in the class). I got the question wrong because I answered, “The author of this doesn’t know what he is talking about but is likely mildly attractive.” The professor didn’t get it.
- I lived in the Caribbean for a month crewing a sailing vessel. At one point, I visited an abandoned resort where I almost accidentally burnt down the island. Life Lesson, abandoned hotels are very flammable.
- Every year I try to do one good act of revenge. My favorite ones have been tin foiling all of my friends’ possessions and filling a different friend’s room with packing peanuts. I spent a year secretly collecting packing peanuts before filling the room. My friends don’t play pranks on me anymore.
- I have my SCUBA certification, skydiving license and am an eagle scout.
- I once toured around Mexico for about a month with a band called Del La Vega. I am in their most popular music video.
- I once spontaneously drove from Seattle to Las Vegas because I missed a Blue Man Group concert. I hear the show is much better in Vegas, anyway.
- One time I ate three full sized cherry pies in the three minutes to become the pie eating champion of Sammamish, WA. It was awesome.
- One glorious time, I built a raft out of drift wood, some discarded rope and a tarp. It was truly a magnificent sight and it even made authentic boat noises.
Inspirations (unordered)
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