28 Things You Need To Do In The 28 Weeks Left In 2016

1. Host a party that revolves around something other than getting wasted. Don’t get me wrong, drinking can definitely be part of the gathering, but host a costume party, or a outdoor barbecue, or a beginning-of-summer party, or a brunch/dinner soirée thing. Do something nice for your friends without having to ever leave your house.

2. See how your 401(k) or IRA is doing. That means finding the password that you got in an automated email two years ago, logging on, and actually taking the time to get acquainted with what the hell is going on in your account. (Alternately, open an IRA or 401(k), especially if you’ve graduated college and recently started a job.)

3. Make yourself run a mile. Just one, if for no other reason than to prove to yourself that you CAN run a mile. You don’t have to time yourself. You don’t have to be even be running the whole time, if you don’t want to.

4. Try a type of cuisine you’ve never tried before. And if you think you’re one of those people who has such a well-versed palette that they’ve tried every food on the face of the earth, you’re for sure wrong. Get on Google, find something you might like, and dine in so you can ask someone for their best recommendations.

5. Try to do a handstand. Maybe fail, give up, and try a headstand instead. Just get upside down, even if it means hanging upside down from monkey bars in a park somewhere.

6. Call someone you generally avoid calling, because you love them but don’t love how long-winded they are. Ask them how their life is going, and actually listen the whole time without putting the phone down or throwing it across the room. A lesson in patience never hurt anyone.

7. Find one activity that will always de-stress you. If you’ve yet to find a go-to practice that will always calm you down, now seems like a good time to start figuring that out.

8. Go on Spotify, and save a language-learning playlist. If you’ve been wanting to brush up on your Spanish skills, for example, there’s a way to do that FOR FREE, so you really have no excuse.

9. Plan your next vacation, even if you don’t actually think you can actually take it within this calendar year. Never hurts to plan ahead for Spring/Summer 2017.

10. Go on Glassdoor and figure out what other people who do your same job around the country are getting paid.

11. Thank the people who put up with your bullshit on a daily basis. Because no matter who you are, you probably bitch to someone on at least a semi-regular basis, and they deserve to know you appreciate them.

12. Go to an SPCA or an animal shelter to hang out with the cats and pups. They’ll appreciate your affection, you’ll appreciate theirs, and you’ll feel slightly better about the fact that your apartment doesn’t allow pets.

13. Go to an outdoor movie. It’s summer, and even if a drive-in or park showing of a moving doesn’t exist a mile away from you, it exists within an hour (well, probably). Find whatever’s playing closest, make a ton of snacks, and go.

14. Go through all of your clothes and get rid of anything you haven’t worn in the last nine months. Donate. Donate. Donate. You don’t have to go full-Marie Kondo, but at least eliminate the things that are collecting dust and cobwebs.

15. Buy a suitcase if you don’t already own one. Adults should own an actual piece of luggage; you can’t be the 26-year-old who still packs their four-year-old backpack whenever they go anywhere.

16. Try to actually understand what your siblings do for a living.

17. Reach out to a friend you met abroad, even if you haven’t talked to them in years.

18. Move your furniture around in your room to see if you can optimize your space better. Sometimes even if you think you have the ideal set-up, changing things up can mess with your perspective, and just generally make you feel like you’re starting fresh, even in the middle of the year in your same old apartment.

19. Make a bucket list of things you want to do in your town or city this summer — with one or two close friends — and then actually make those things happen.

20. Make out with someone, whether it’s your S.O., spouse, partner, a stranger at a bar, or a friend you’ve had a not-so-casual crush on for three years.

21. Go to a baseball game. It doesn’t even have to be a MLB game (though often you can get bleacher seats at amazing park for $20-$40), it can really be any park near you that offers peanuts, cracker jacks, and a seventh-inning stretch.

22. Learn to make a fancy cocktail. Better yet, learn what cocktail you most enjoy drinking, and learn to make it. Then when people ask you what your go-to drink is, you’ll actually have an answer.

23. Go for a good, long hike, even if you hate the outdoors. If you live in a city, escape for a day and look for a hiking trail that provides views of things other than tall buildings and Shake Shacks.

24. Start an email chain with your long-distance friends, and use it to update each other on all of your lives, to share important articles, must-see memes, recipes, and weird videos.

25. Make good playlists for every occasion. My thought is that, at the very least, you should have 2-3 commuting playlists, 2-3 work playlists, a party playlist, a getting ready playlist, a few playlists for when you have people over, a work out playlist, and seasonal/holiday-appropriate playlists.

26. Set money goals for yourself for the next three months, the end of this year, the end of next year, and five years from now. Write them down.

27. Do your own personal ~career evaluation~ with yourself. Think about what you’d change about your job, and what you’d keep. Think about what you want to be doing at work in order to achieve your next goal, or move in the direction you want to be moving in.

28. Start a project around your house; an arts and crafts project, a DIY project, framing all the things you’ve wanted to frame and putting them up on the wall, or even a project that involves organizing your drawers in a way that you’ll actually utilize them instead of always throwing your shit on the floor.