My version: You will regret missed opportunities far more than anything you actually do.
Totally not true. Things I actually do have far more salience. Things I don’t actually do I usually don’t even remember and if I do they certainly don’t drag around much in the way of emotional weight. Perhaps my regret mechanism is different?
I expect that people who regret missed opportunities more than actual behavior have higher estimates of the expected value of hypothetical actions than people who don’t. That is, they believe the X they didn’t do would have been totally awesome, whereas the Xes they actually did do have various flaws and blemishes.
I tend towards inaction, so I tend to regret inaction more than action—there’s often been situations where I think I probably could have made a difference if I’d just gotten involved. That said, actions occasionally explode in BIG ways and form very lasting, intense regrets. I seem to handle the latter MUCH better than the former, though, so I’d still rather push towards action over inaction.
But, ideally, I’d like to push for “action, with 5 minutes of sane contemplation beforehand”, because I almost never regret that—I often still have “learning experiences”, but it’s much easier to say to myself “Well, I did the best I could with the information I had at the time, and now I’ll have a better model in the future”.
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence. - - Publilius Syrus
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. - - Sydney Harris
My version: You will regret missed opportunities far more than anything you actually do.
But that’s probably a bias. You often don’t realize what you missed; and even if you do, the missed things are usually in a far mode.
Totally not true. Things I actually do have far more salience. Things I don’t actually do I usually don’t even remember and if I do they certainly don’t drag around much in the way of emotional weight. Perhaps my regret mechanism is different?
I expect that people who regret missed opportunities more than actual behavior have higher estimates of the expected value of hypothetical actions than people who don’t. That is, they believe the X they didn’t do would have been totally awesome, whereas the Xes they actually did do have various flaws and blemishes.
I tend towards inaction, so I tend to regret inaction more than action—there’s often been situations where I think I probably could have made a difference if I’d just gotten involved. That said, actions occasionally explode in BIG ways and form very lasting, intense regrets. I seem to handle the latter MUCH better than the former, though, so I’d still rather push towards action over inaction.
But, ideally, I’d like to push for “action, with 5 minutes of sane contemplation beforehand”, because I almost never regret that—I often still have “learning experiences”, but it’s much easier to say to myself “Well, I did the best I could with the information I had at the time, and now I’ll have a better model in the future”.