D·07
Decisions & Judgment
Minimise Regret, Not Failure
In the long run, people regret what they didn't do about twice as often as what they did.
- Evidence
- solid
- Topic
- Decisions
- Things to do
- 3
- Read
- 1 min
solidHow strong is the evidence?
Good evidence behind it, but fewer people have checked it independently.
- Gilovich & Medvec, Psychological Review, 1995
- Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying (2011)
Why it works
Actions that go wrong get repaired, explained, and absorbed. Inactions stay open, and the imagined alternative never gets tested against reality.
What to do about it
- Project to 80 and ask which choice you'd regret not having tried.
- Apply it only to the reversible-and-large: the call, the ask, the move, the apology.
- Note that the dying's most common regret is having lived someone else's expected life — and the second is having worked too much.
Where people go wrong
Using it to justify recklessness. Regret minimisation is about asymmetric upside, not about ignoring downside.
Read next
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- Start From the Base RateAsk what usually happens to cases like this one before you consider what is special about this one.proven
- The Planning FallacyYour estimate of how long this will take is an estimate of the best case, and you know it is not the best case.proven
- The Pre-MortemBefore committing, assume it is eighteen months later and the project has failed. Write the story of why.solid