Your week has a shape. Wake, scroll, work, scroll, sleep. A side quest is the small, weird, deliberate thing that breaks the loop - no app required, no audience needed. Here are one hundred to steal from.
A side quest is not a hobby and not a goal. It is a one-off act of curiosity. It can take ten minutes or a weekend. The only rule: it has to nudge you slightly off your usual line.
Pick one a week. Cross it off in a notebook (or in the Side Quest Log). Watch what happens to a year.
Creative
- →Write a one-page zine about the last week of your life
- →Draw the view from your kitchen window without lifting the pen
- →Make a mixtape for someone who will never hear it
- →Photograph ten doors on your street
- →Write a short story in exactly 100 words
- →Carve something out of a bar of soap
- →Letter a sign for a shop that does not exist
- →Tape-record five minutes of your neighbourhood
- →Cook a recipe entirely from a 1970s cookbook
- →Build something from only what is in the recycling
- →Make a zine about a stranger you saw once
- →Paint a small rock and leave it somewhere
- →Sketch every meal you eat for a week
Social
- →Eat alone at a restaurant with no phone on the table
- →Write a letter - a real one - to someone who shaped you
- →Compliment three strangers in one day
- →Throw a tiny dinner party with three rules and one candle
- →Reconnect with the friend you keep meaning to text
- →Ask an older relative to tell you a story you have never heard
- →Run a single round of pub quiz on your own table
- →Buy a coffee for the person behind you
- →Host a film night with a mandatory dress code
- →Walk a dog you do not own (ask first)
- →Sit on a bench for an hour and see what happens
- →Start a conversation with a shopkeeper you only ever nod at
Physical
- →Walk the entire length of a single bus route
- →Try a sport you last did at school
- →Swim outside before nine in the morning
- →Climb every set of stairs in your neighbourhood
- →Cycle until your legs say no, then turn around
- →Learn three skateboard tricks badly
- →Run somewhere you have only ever driven
- →Take a yoga class taught in a language you do not speak
- →Go bouldering with a friend who is worse than you
- →Train for a 5k and never tell anyone
- →Wild swim somewhere safe
- →Sleep one night under canvas in your back garden
Work and skills
- →Spend an afternoon shadowing a job you envied as a kid
- →Build a tiny website for an idea you will never ship
- →Learn the basics of a craft your grandparents had
- →Sell something you made for one pound
- →Pitch a side project to a single trusted friend
- →Take a free workshop in a subject unrelated to your job
- →Write a one-page business plan in a notebook
- →Email someone whose work you admire - no ask
- →Volunteer for one shift at a charity event
- →Teach a friend something you take for granted
- →Spend a day in a co-working space in another town
Travel and place
- →Get the train to the next stop you have never visited
- →Walk every street within a one-mile radius of your home
- →Stay one night in a town with no plan
- →Visit a museum in your own city you have never been to
- →Eat at the oldest restaurant in your postcode
- →Drive somewhere only because the name is interesting
- →Take the slowest possible route to work for a week
- →Spend an hour in a part of town you usually avoid
- →Catch a sunrise from a place you have never seen one
- →Plan a 24-hour trip with a budget under fifty pounds
- →Take a bus ride with your eyes off the phone
Analog
- →Buy a disposable camera and finish the roll in a day
- →Read a paper map and navigate without GPS
- →Listen to a full album, sleeve-in-hand, no skipping
- →Write a journal entry every night for a week, by hand
- →Send a postcard to your future self
- →Print twenty photos and hang them on a wall
- →Buy a book on a topic you know nothing about
- →Spend an evening with no screens whatsoever
- →Cook one meal entirely without recipes online
- →Record a voice note instead of texting a friend
- →Shop only at independent stores for a week
Courage
- →Have the conversation you have been avoiding
- →Ask for the discount, the upgrade, the favour
- →Quit the thing that is quietly draining you
- →Sing in front of strangers, even badly
- →Take a class where you will be the worst in the room
- →Tell someone the thing you have never told them
- →Apply for the job you do not feel ready for
- →Say no for a whole week without explaining why
- →Speak up the first time you disagree, not the fifth
- →Try the food, the route, the idea you keep dismissing
- →Make the first move
- →Wear the thing you keep saving for special
- →Book the trip before you can talk yourself out of it
Pick one. Do it this week. Write it down. The list is not the point - the doing is. Your next first is closer than you think.
Keep going
- · The Sidequest Journal/tools
- · The Limitless cast/
- · Read the manifesto/manifesto