Gravestone Test and the Five Buckets Audit
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- —
Ali's two-part method for catching misalignment before it becomes burnout. The gravestone test asks what you'd want written on your headstone, extended to what you'd want people to say at your funeral. Ali's answer — good father, good husband, inspirational teacher — reframed his entire career. The five buckets audit is the recurring check: score health, wealth, love, growth and joy from 0 to 10, where 10 couldn't possibly be better and 0 couldn't possibly be worse, then act on whichever bucket is lowest. Underneath sits a distinction he's been working with: meaning tends to come from service to others, while happiness comes from filling your own buckets first.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Run the gravestone test
Ask what you'd want written on your gravestone, then what you'd want people to say at your funeral. Sit with the answer rather than rushing to conclusions.
Pro tip Ali spent a long time reflecting on this before it produced anything useful.
- 2
Look backwards for evidence
Check where in your past the most joy and meaning actually came from. Ali realised he'd been teaching since he was thirteen — helping schoolmates with exams, private tutoring, quizzing medical students on the wards.
Pro tip The pattern usually predates the career, which is why looking back beats speculating forward.
- 3
Name the identity, not the job title
Separate what you are from the medium you use. Ali defines himself as a teacher and stays agnostic about format — videos, podcast, book, live teaching — because formats come and go.
- 4
Score the five buckets 0-10
Health, wealth, love, growth, joy. Run it as a quick mental audit, using 10 as couldn't possibly be better and 0 as couldn't possibly be worse.
Pro tip It takes two minutes and works fine lying awake in bed.
- 5
Act on the lowest bucket this week
Turn the low score into one concrete thing you'll do — specifically something for its own sake, with no economic output and not in service to anyone else.
Pro tip Recognising the imbalance is what makes rebalancing possible; the score alone changes nothing.
Watch out A big launch or deadline is exactly when a bucket silently drops without you noticing.
- 6
Keep a bucket list and raid it quarterly
Maintain a running list of things it would be cool to try, then in a quarterly review pick one and actually book it.
Pro tip Ali's list includes kite surfing, singing lessons, recording an album, learning to surf and acro yoga — including things he's bad at.
In the wild
A year into being a doctor and feeling misaligned, Ali went looking for exercises on how to figure out what to do with your life and hit the gravestone technique. His answer came out as some combination of good father, good husband and inspirational teacher. Reflecting on it, he saw that the most joy he got from medicine was teaching medical students on the ward, and that he'd been teaching in some form since he was thirteen.
→ He concluded he'd rather be a medical educator than a medical practitioner — the realisation that reframed the videos, podcast and book as teaching in different formats.
Lying in bed unable to sleep, Ali ran the five buckets audit on himself and found the joy category sitting at about three out of ten. With the book publication and everything around it, he'd forgotten to do anything purely for its own sake — no video games, no dabbling with the guitar, because there was always something to do.
→ Recognising it let him rebalance, and he set out that week to work out how to put more joy back into what he was doing.
Common mistakes
Only auditing the work bucket
Wealth and growth are the easiest to measure and the easiest to over-index on. Ali's own drop showed up in joy, the bucket with no metrics attached.
Confusing meaning with happiness
Meaning tends to come from service, which is why parenting can feel deeply meaningful while day-to-day happiness dips. Filling your own buckets is a separate job from serving others.
Doing the audit and scheduling nothing
A score is only useful if it converts into something on this week's calendar, whether that's an acro yoga class or an hour with the guitar.
From the transcript
“this uh gravestone technique where you ask yourself what would I want written on my gravestone”
“so those are the the five sort of buckets I think for myself health wealth love growth Joy”
“I realized that the joy category actually is about three out of 10”
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