Two months before his death, computer science professor Randy Pausch gave a commencement speech at Carnegie Mellon University. 

In his speech, he shared the following observation:

“It is not the things we do in life that we regret on our deathbed. It is the things we do not. I assure you I’ve done a lot of really stupid things, and none of them bother me. All the mistakes, and all the dopey things, and all the times I was embarrassed — they don’t matter. What matters is that I can kind of look back and say: Pretty much any time I got the chance to do something cool I tried to grab for it — and that’s where my solace comes from.” ¹

Pausch knew he was dying at the time. He had recently received a terminal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. For him, the words “deathbed” and “solace” were all too real.

Regret is a strange thing, a many-headed monster that will look a little different for each of us. 

Some regrets are more painful than others (“I wish I had visited my grandma more often when she was in hospice”). Some may only seem like regrets in hindsight (“I wish I had hooked up with Keith Richards after all. Even though something at the time told me to go home”). ²

The problem with regret is that it’s based on counterfactual thinking. There’s no way to do a controlled test to see what life would be like if we had or hadn’t done the regrettable thing. 

On the other hand, when a man dying of pancreatic cancer decides to make a statement about regret during the 6-and-a-half minutes of his college commencement speech, it’s probably wise to listen.

People who are dying tend to have a perspective the rest of us don’t. 

People Regret What They Didn’t Do

Pausch’s opinion on regret is far from unique. Studies on regret both before and after his speech in 2008 point to a similar finding:

We tend to regret the things we didn’t do the most.

Why is this?

Two researchers, Gilovich and Medvec, ran a study on regret in 1994 using a series of phone calls, written questionnaires, and face-to-face interviews. They found that regrets over inaction outnumber regrets over action taken by a ratio of 2:1. Here is their ultimate explanation:

“The story of our regrettable actions tends to be closed; the story of our failures to act, open. Because regrettable inactions are more alive, current, and in-complete than regrettable actions, one is reminded of them more often. A regret that one is reminded of more often is a regret one experiences more often.” ³

When you screw up royally on something, you feel immediate pain and humiliation. Few things feel worse, for example, than selling off a stock that ends up skyrocketing in value just a few months or years later. But at least with this type of blunder the case is closed.

Sure, you could wonder “what if” you’d held onto the stock and become filthy rich, but it’s a moot point. You made a choice that you thought at the time was right, and your prediction turned out to be wrong. There’s nothing to do except move on.

Regrets of inaction are the ultimate “what ifs.” They are not grounded in reality. They form a graveyard of wistful imaginings and speculations that live forever in our minds, messing with our view of the here and now.

With regrets of inaction, we never get closure. You could spend the rest of your life wondering “What if I had stuck with my ballet practice?” and you’ll never be any closer to knowing whether or not you would have ended up on a world-class stage.

Regrets of inaction are the ultimate “what ifs.” They are not grounded in reality. They form a graveyard of wistful imaginings and speculations that live forever in our minds, messing with our view of the here and now.

Worst of all, they’re rooted in ignorance.

Action Is a Form of Knowing

Any type of regret is painful, but when it comes to regretting things you’ve actually done, you at least have the chance to learn something.

More than 20 years after Gilovich and Medvec published their findings on regret, journalist Daniel Pink compiled what is probably the largest survey on regret ever conducted. His findings supported much of what Gilovich and Medvec had found: once again, people’s regrets over inaction outnumbered their regrets over action by 2:1. “One of the most robust findings, in the academic research and my own, is that over time we are much more likely to regret the chances we didn’t take than the chances we did.” ⁴

Pink’s opinion is that with actions of regret, you have the comfort of “at least.” Even if you made a wrong turn, there’s usually something you can say you learned or got out of it. “For example,” he tells us, “Many people who felt they married the wrong person would say, ‘At least I have these great kids.’ With regrets of inaction, that’s impossible.” ⁵

In Pink’s opinion, too often we fail to act because we are afraid of the risk and the difficulty (or, I would add, because we’re affected by present bias). We get stuck in our heads with planning and trying to play it safe when we should be using action as a tool to learn and explore.

Even the actions we take that we later regret can be good, if we learn from them. “Sometimes,” Pink says, “We don’t realize that action is a form of knowing. That we can figure stuff out by doing it.” ⁶

When you sell off a stock prematurely or marry the wrong person, you can at least figure out why you screwed up, and use that information to do better next time.

When you fail to take steps towards your dreams – whether it’s being a prima ballerina, an entrepreneur, or getting married – all you’ve figured out is that you were too scared (or passive) to go for it.

How We Can Avoid Regrets of Inaction

Thanks to people like Randy Pausch we don’t have to wait for a cancer diagnosis to learn what matters most (and what doesn’t). We can learn from their hard-won, bittersweet experience.

The dangerous thing about not taking action is that while we avoid intense regret now, we will experience a much sadder and more chronic regret later. We also miss out on the opportunity to discover truths we might not otherwise.

One way we can have fewer action-based regrets is to frame each choice we make as a way to “figure stuff out,” instead of an all-or-nothing decision. We can also keep our future selves in mind so that we’re more motivated to not quit or get cold feet.

There is no way to avoid regret in this life (or pain, for that matter). The choice we do get is to either take action or play it safe. There’s no way to know ahead of time how things will turn out; sometimes the best way to figure out if something is right is to just do it.

If you don’t, you run the painful risk of wondering “what if” for the rest of your life.

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Read Next: How Thinking About Death Can Make You Happier →

1. You can watch Pausch’s speech here. (For reference, his name is pronounced “Powsh.”)
2. This is an actual regret I came across on a subreddit, “Ask Old People.”
3. Gilovich, T. (1994). The Temporal Pattern to the Experience of Regret. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(3), 357-365. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.67.3.357. Alternative link here.
4. Pink, D. H. (2022). The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward. Riverhead Books.
5. Hu, E., & Tagle, A. (2022, December 21). How examining our regrets can make for a more meaningful life. NPR “Life Kit”. https://www.npr.org/2022/03/16/1087010308/the-power-of-regret-how-examining-regret-can-help-you-live-a-meaningful-life
6. Ibid.