Reducing regret for our future self is a big driving factor in the decisions we take. When standing at a fork-road, the thought of minimizing regret adds a lot of pressure to the decision. However despite our best tries, regret will continue piling up as one grows old. There will always be paths or people you leave behind, things you don’t do, and opportunities you don’t take advantage of. Knowing this, how does one minimize the regrets over their life? I feel like there are two classes of regret, and minimizing one of them is easier than the other.
The first one is “regret of choice”. Whenever you take a path, there will be other paths you don’t get to take, and this regret originates precisely because of that choice. What job to take? Which city to live in? To go for grad degree or not? Choosing one means leaving all the other behind (alteast for the time being). This kind of regret is inevitable because “choosing” is a low-information problem. We never have the full information. We never know how the future will turn out to be. So we are bound to make decisions that can fail or be worse than other options.
The second kind of regret is “regret of path”. Once a choice is made, we need to put effort into making that choice work. We need to work hard to make the best use of the path we have chosen for ourselves. Having selected a job, we need to work hard to improve at it. Having found a partner, we need to put effort into making the relationship work. The path is made up of actions that are in our control, and it will decide how far we will go in that path. Maybe the path we chose for ourself isn’t the best, but we’ll never know that until we move ahead on that path. Thus, we have more control to reduce this part of the regret equation.
Total Regret = Regret of choice + regret of path
For the last three months I found myself searching for jobs to take. I was overwhelmed by the choices that exist and the difficult trade-offs involved. I even felt paralyzed, the fear being that I’ll choose something I’ll end up not liking, and hence I would stagnate and end up wasting time. I’ll look back and regret making that choice. Here, I’m dwelling on the regret of the first kind. But I will never have enough information or wisdom to make the correct decision and minimize this regret. However, whatever I end up doing, what I have in control is how much effort I’m putting into that job to excel. I should reduce the pressure to make the perfect decision.