Regret minimization framework
Picture yourself at 80 looking back, then pick the option you would regret least
Big, frightening decisions get easier when you move the vantage point. Instead of weighing the choice against this year's bonus or next month's discomfort, you imagine yourself at eighty, looking back, and ask which path you would regret. Failure, seen from there, usually looks survivable; never having tried usually does not. It is deliberately blunt, and it is most useful for the handful of irreversible, life-shaping calls rather than everyday ones.
People on record
Sorted by strength of stance
Does it: documented as part of their own routine. Recommends: explicitly advises other people to do it. Discusses: covered it substantively without clear personal adoption; this can include criticism or disagreement.
- Jeff BezosDoes it
Amazon and Blue Origin founder · Six-page memos and eight hours of sleep
Used it to leave Wall Street for Amazon: he projected himself to eighty and asked which choice he would regret. He knew he would not regret failing but would regret never having tried, and says the exercise cuts through the daily confusion.
Source: Academy of Achievement: Jeff Bezos interview, 2001 (transcript)
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