Using Regret as Fuel for Getting Started
It’s the path untraveled that haunts us.
Last week, I wrote about how I kicked my procrastination into touch by looking at it through an emotional lens, rather than a time-management lens.
More than 87,000 people read that post and this week’s newsletter is inspired by a comment from Redditor u/notwachuthink 👇
Question: Could you expound on just regret minimization? The examples given involve playing out the outcomes of an action or scenario, and I could see how these could send people with anxiety spiraling to the depths of dread and ensuing paralysis, and result in even more procrastination.Regret is a powerful emotion. It’s the difference between the outcome of a decision made and the possibility of a perceived alternative outcome. It can compel us to act or as commented above, lead to inertia.
There are two types of regret I’ll dive into today:
Regret of Action
Regret of Inaction
We tend to feel regret over actions that we have taken in the short term. In the long term however, it is the regret of inaction that weighs heaviest.
A Tale of Regret
4 years ago, I quit a high-paying city sales job to start my own company. Within the first couple of months, I regretted it. Increased stress, no regular payday and I had grossly overestimated my circle of competence. To put it frankly, I had no clue what I was doing.
6 months later, the pandemic swept the globe and having lost everything I had been working toward for half a year, the regret was raging inside me. As was my inner voice.
“If I had just waited a few months I would’ve never started this venture.”
“It would’ve been payday today if I stayed in my job.”
“What were you thinking?!”
A short 18 months after starting that business I ate humble pie, shut up shop and polished my CV.
It’s been two years now since closing the doors and I can honestly say that I don’t regret a single thing.
The mistakes I made are life lessons learned. My small circle of competence grew larger as I was forced to pick up new skills. Dealing with the daily struggle is how I grew as a person.
Yes, I felt regret in that moment. But I grossly overestimated the regret of my actions in the short-term.
I can rest easy at night knowing that I tried and that I pushed myself to take on new and uncomfortable challenges. I know that the feeling of regret I would feel today, or in 10 years time, would be far greater than the feeling of ‘what could have been’ if I didn’t try.
The Path Untraveled
We must accept that we cannot live a life without regrets entirely. But we can minimize the number of regrets we have when we are aged 80.
Regret minimization is a framework for making big decisions, popularized by Jeff Bezos who used the framework to decide if he should start Amazon. It looks a little like this:
Visualize yourself at aged 80
Picture a life where you had made that decision and failed, do you regret it?
Picture a life where you had not made that decision at all, do you regret it?
In most cases, you will never regret having tried and failed. Since it is the acts of omission that will stay with us in our final days.
“It’s the path untraveled that haunts us.” - Bezos
You want to minimize the number of “What ifs?” when you’re in your final years.
So, what if the thought of outcomes and regrets in the distant future do not compel you into action but instead lead to inertia as u/notwachuthink asked?
Instead, picture the positive outcome you will get from taking the action rather than the negative outcome if you don’t take action.
In my example in the previous newsletter, I visualized myself as a 45yo unable to play with my kid because I was unfit and overweight. That’s a shock tactic. This shocked me into action and I hit the gym using the perceived regret of inaction as fuel for motivation.
But I could also reframe this projection, visualizing what life would look like if I was fit and healthy, chasing around the garden after my kid and hearing them giggle with joy. That is equally as motivating to start taking my health more seriously, and perhaps it’s fair to say, a little more exciting to think about.
In the end, it’s finding what works for you. The outcome is the same.
On Inertia
Sorry but I’m going to have to get a little sciency for just 1 second…
An object at rest remains at rest. An object in motion remains in motion. UNLESS affected by some outside force… and breathe.
If we are doing the same thing we have always done to maintain the status quo, to remain comfortable with the known rather than venturing into the unknown, then we are at rest.
So to break through inertia apply an outside force to kick yourself into motion.
The regret minimization framework is the outside force I apply to kick myself into motion. I use regret of inaction as fuel for getting started.
And it’s so much easier to stay in motion once you start moving (Remember: An object in motion remains in motion).