jppope
8 hours ago
This article is akin to something I wrote a while ago - https://jonpauluritis.com/articles/on-giving-better-advice/
I would often do general consulting while mainly helping with tech, marketing or sales... and I noticed that all of my most important advice no one would follow. It got so extreme that I would often joke that "I know my advice is good because no one ever takes it". David Maister acknowledged a similar thing in his book "Strategy and the Fat Smoker: Doing What's Obvious But Not Easy"
This article strikes a chord of course because its right in line with that thought. Deathbed regrets in that sense are kind of cheap - they knew what they were doing and did it anyway. I think the author is however missing a key feature of this genre though - those regrets are almost always things that are there, that have no deadline and are easily delayed. Spending time with family, working on hobbies or creative pursuits, and so on. What the regretters are failing to attribute is their lack of discipline... and that there is a valuable take away. The genre could really be just a derivative of: "I wish I had been more disciplined in my life"
pegasus
5 hours ago
People on their deathbed are not deploring their lack of discipline. In very real sense, what these people are mourning is the opposite. TFA links to another article, "The Deathbed Fallacy", which lists some of the most often mentioned regrets, namely:
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I didn’t work so hard.
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.
I wish I didn't care that much for others' opinion.
Yes, deathbed regrets aren't actionable self-help advice. They are confessions, really, and no, they are not cheap. They are messages from those who've reached the fifth level of relating with death, that of acceptance, whereas we're still loitering on the first one, denial [1]. They uncover something deep and painful in ourselves, they say most of us are missing something important when we are afraid to go the uncharted routes and follow the safe pre-written ones instead.
[1] "The Denial of Death" is a book worth checking out.
roenxi
6 hours ago
There are a lot of people who more discipline would help, but in many cases it seems to me that they just don't know what to do. For example, if someone lying there dying has a regret like "I wish I hadn't worked so hard" or "I wish I had let myself be happier" it is hard to say that their #1 problem is that they lacked discipline. I know a couple of people who are extremely disciplined ... at making themselves unhappy for no good reason.
I think it is more likely that a lot of people either didn't know how to relax - or potentially have internalised something about the nature of happiness that isn't true and that they can't let go of.
raffraffraff
7 hours ago
It's a bit like climate change. Every day we wake up in our comfy beds, we have aircon, gore tex, big cars, hurricane proof buildings. We see that there's a big problem unfolding over the next generation or two. Or three. Maybe a crop failure or two will lead to high coffee prices. Perhaps avocados will disappear from the shelves of the supermarket for a month or two and we'll just pause, say "huh?". Someone might mention a species of shellfish we never heard of which is now extinct, or there'll be even more wildfires "somewhere I don't live" that are awful and everything but does this transatlantic flight really make a difference or does it matter if I upgrade my phone/laptop/car every year... Anyways I need to get the kids to creche and get to work. I don't have time to think about this stuff.
Slow burning problems are the worst because they're so easy to ignore until it's to late.
jeremyjh
6 hours ago
I imagine this is being downvoted because it suggests consumers need to change their behavior. As the Reddit hive mind knows: corporations produce the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions. But at the end of nearly all those supply chains are consumers, without which the enterprise would not exist.
Ultimately it is Moloch [0] who drives us here.
[0]: https://medium.com/@happybits/moloch-a-race-to-the-bottom-wh...
nothrabannosir
6 hours ago
Individual action cannot solve a tragedy of the commons. Refraining from consuming the commons literally just leaves more for others to consume. Which they will.
A tragedy of the commons can only be resolved through collective action. Carbon tax is the obvious example.
GP technically didn't suggest otherwise, and in fact the same "selfishness" highlighted in that comment also drives people to vote against the sacrifice of collective action, so IMO they're correct. But if you forget about that (implied) step, and instead read "we should all individually just get rid of our ACs and stop flying, to solve climate change" (which GP didn't say), then that would be incorrect.
jeremyjh
3 hours ago
I largely agree and I attributed it to the same problem; Moloch is a larger class of problems that includes tragedy of the commons (see other comment for a much better link).
I agree also that legislation like carbon taxes are the only ways to really solve the problem, and mostly read GP's comment with the more generous interpretation.
But I don't think that we should see the lack of that as a license for unhinged consumerism. I think people should hold on to their phones and cars awhile. They should prefer more fuel efficient vehicles if they can afford them, etc.
strken
3 hours ago
This is an oversimplification. Collective action is driven by a mass of individual beliefs that are strong enough to suppress bad actors. If you are one of the bad actors, it's more difficult to force the other bad actors to stop because they can accuse you of hypocrisy.
See e.g. Al Gore taking flights to speaking engagements about climate change. From one perspective, this is an effective tool and probably even carbon-negative if it leads to effective change. On another level, why is a guy with so many frequent flier miles telling me to fly less? Why is a rich guy who can eat the cost of a carbon tax telling me my plane tickets will cost more? Etc.
I am reminded of the "no ethical consumption under capitalism" refrain, which is sometimes used by people who don't like capitalism to justify taking the absolute least ethical option available.
nothrabannosir
an hour ago
> why is a guy with so many frequent flier miles telling me to fly less?
Maybe this is nitpicking but just to satisfy my own record more than anything: that would be individual action and I agree Al gore shouldn’t be telling anyone to fly less.
> Why is a rich guy who can eat the cost of a carbon tax telling me my plane tickets will cost more?
Carbon taxes affect big consumers more than small ones, and I would absolutely support eg a Canadian “carbon price” model where the money is doled out to everyone at the end of the year. And if anyone is still worse off, tax oil companies more until poor people are least-bad-off :)
So far I’m on board with both.
user
4 hours ago
Yodel0914
4 hours ago
Scott’s Meditations on Moloch, where I’m fairly sure the concept originated, is one of his best (from back in 2014):
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
jeremyjh
4 hours ago
You are right, this is a better link, I had trouble finding it again for some reason.
vorpalhex
8 hours ago
I think this is an infinitely more useful way of saying what the blogger was attempting to.
There is a flawed prioritization happening that we are seeing have it's natural conclusion on the deathbed - delaying things that feel forever available (spending time with the kids) for things that feel urgent (that critical meeting).
As you said, it takes discipline to avoid this trap. There will always be another urgent meeting, but your children will grow up and go have their own lives.
"Fake urgency" is a terrible poisonous thing that often seeps into the work world. It is the cause of many ills and most deathbed regrets.