2025 Activity Bingo

I haven't made resolutions the last few years, but I wanted a way to be mindful and stay engaged with doing new/meaningful things this coming year. Someone mentioned they'd heard about people making bingo cards and that really took off for me. I did some brainstorming and brought my idea to fb, and in the end I generated a series of cards: 

My intent is to go for one bingo (5 cells in a row, any direction) per month, but hey, maybe I'll get motivated to do more! 

A couple people asked how to do this so I figured it's better to write it up where I can find & share it! 

Here's how I made the cards. 

1. Made a list of activities that I might want to do or be reminded/prompted to do.
2. Grouped them into five categories
3. Dug around til I found a site that would let me generate free bingo cards and would respect the category concept (rather than fully randomizing my items across the whole card).

Do you want to play? Here are my categories/activities; feel free to change them up in ways that suit you.

Fitness/Health [I kept this list short because I wanted each item to appear on every card]

• Try a gym near home
• Walk 5 days in a row
• Eat vegan 5 days in a row
• Don't use my car 5 days in a row
• No sugar 5 days in a row

Food

• Try a new food cart
• Try 3 carts in the same pod (on different visits)
• Go to an old-school Portland restaurant
• Have a fancy meal out 
• Revisit a place I've been meaning to get back to 
• Try a new to me restaurant
• Spend 1 hour in a coffee/tea shop

Exploration

• Coast visit
• Close out of town visit [I have a couple friends within a one-hour drive I see shamefully rarely]
• Camp
• Walking tour
• Organized bike ride
• At home spa day
• Explore another neighborhood 
• Plan/do a further-away visit
• Hike out of town 

Community

• Volunteer
• Give blood 
• Host a dinner
• Host a game night 
• Mail a postcard
• Have a zoom call with a friend
• Have a conversation with a stranger

Culture

• Read a nonfiction book [I was thinking about global soccer culture when I added this]
• Watch a PBS show/non-fiction series
• Go to a neighborhood festival/monthly art walk
• Movie in theater
• Indie/arty film in a theater
• Ballet/opera/symphony
• Live music
• Live music [added twice so it would come up more often]
• New to me museum
• Art class
• Art museum/tour [aka use my membership]

Then I used print-bingo.com and made these choices: 

• A word can only appear in its column
• text size 10 points (smaller might have been better)
• four bingo cards per page
• column headers - changed from BINGO to Fitness, Food, etc
• listed my brainstormed activities under the appropriate header 
• chose output type: bingo cards

Go forth and do fun things!