The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward

by Daniel H. Pink

For example, hundreds of people in the survey who turned down earlier opportunities to travel listed that decision as their top regret. If my regret-based dating app fails, I could instead launch an Expedia-for-the-regretful site, which would include special travel packages for the legions of college graduates in the surveys who regretted not studying abroad. “It’s not the bad or stupid things I’ve done but the things I didn’t do that have caused me the most regret in life,” said Gemma West of Adelaide, Australia. [My] biggest regret is not going backpacking around Europe when I was eighteen, because I was scared—an important rite of passage for Australians and something my best friend did with someone else. A forty-seven-year-old woman from Utah said: I regret not traveling more when I was younger—before I had a mortgage and child and “real job” and all the responsibilities of being an adult. Because now, I don’t feel like I have the freedom to do it.