Daniel Pink Has a Few Regrets (and So Should You)
My father has said over the years that he has “no regrets.” I have always found this statement confusing — I know him to be discerning, and humble about his fallibility. Surely we all have regrets if we force ourselves to think about it, we all have made mistakes from which we have learned, or from which others can learn. I think he means something else when he says this — perhaps something about gratitude for his good fortune in life. But still that mantra repeated by so many —“no regrets” — and tattooed on countless body parts, is part of a collective decision to turn away from critical feedback that helps us navigate our lives.
I do not regret trying to learn to surf.
Daniel Pink is not ignoring regret — quite the contrary, he has conducted a massive study of 19,000 regrets from people in over 100 countries. This data, as he puts it, provides a "photographic negative of the good life." What do people most regret? You will have to listen to find out … these regrets, which fall into consistent categories, provide a clear guide to how to live a gratifying life. A life not with no regrets, but fewer.
Daniel Pink has an incredible track record of writing books that are both important and useful — Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us changed my understanding of human motivation, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing changed the way I schedule my day. The Power of Regret will inform some of my decisions about life architecture … and it might just do the same for you.
Listen here, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and let’s discuss in the comments below! What are your regrets? If you share below, I will do the same.?
How Dan’s writing process has evolved.
Rufus: I think it's important for our listeners to know that you have not only read the research on regrets, but you've also conducted a World Regret Survey, collecting more than 16,000 survey responses from people in 105 countries. And in the process, you've taken this very interesting step, Dan, from being a bestselling author with a knack for pulling together disparate scientific analysis to help us better understand our behavior towards actually conducting what sounds like one of the most authoritative studies, and then analyzing the data to uncover what you call the “deep structure” of regret. Do you see this as a more ambitious project than what you've done in the past??
Dan: I don't know if I see it that way. I think it's actually a wave of the future because it's easier to do now than ever before. That's a huge factor.?
The World Regret Survey was just a giant collection tool where I asked people around the world to submit a regret. We’re now at over 19,000 from 109 countries. It's crazy how many we have.?
I also did another piece of research called the American Regret Project, which was a quantitative survey, basically a giant public opinion poll, where I worked with a data analytics company and we put together a sample of 4,489 Americans, a representative sample large enough that we could weight it by demographic groups. When I first started in this business, there's no way I could have done something like that. No way. It would have been cost prohibitive, the technology wasn't there. Now, the costs have come down, and I can do the analysis on my laptop. It's incredible what you're able to do right now. And so I think that it's so much easier for individuals to do sophisticated, large-scale research now than ever before.?
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On the book’s origins.?
Rufus: I'm curious about what drew you to the subject of regret. My understanding is that it all started in 2019 at your daughter's college graduation. Is that correct??
Dan: You’re a parent. You can understand this. When my elder daughter graduated from college, it was a little bit of an out-of-body experience. It's almost like you blink an eye and the kid is born, and then suddenly she's striding across the stage getting a diploma. My mind starts to wander, and it wandered to my own college experience, which was generally pretty happy. But I started thinking about my own regrets in college. Regrets about kindness. Regrets about not working hard enough. Regrets about not taking enough risks. And when I came back and started discussing them with people, I found that people, in contrast to what you might expect, leaned in. They wanted to talk about this stuff. And as a writer that's always a very interesting response.?
As a writer, when you have ideas, or when you're curious about something, you don't keep it to yourself. You socialize it. You put it out there. Because the reaction you get from people is always fascinating. And I've had so many times where people are just like, Okay, I couldn't care less about what you're talking about. Can we please return to talking about sports or home renovation or something? And, in this case, people really leaned in. It was almost like gut instinct where it was like, Whoa, wait a second. This is a different kind of response. There's a depth to it. There's an electricity to it. That really surprised me. And so I actually put aside an entirely different book and wrote an entirely new book proposal around this.
Rufus: There's also something contestable, isn't there, in the sense that you have this culture of no regrets, what you call the “life-thwarting nonsense of no regrets.” There's a puzzle to be solved, and there's a bit of a debate at the center of this, isn't there?
Dan: That's a really good point. I think it's a really good point about books in general. You do want to take on something that's contestable. Too often what you see in some non-fiction are books that simply confirm what we already believe and try to do that in clever ways. And what I tried to do here is, like, I wanted to contest this idea, because based on my research it was, like, This proposition, this idea that we should be resolutely positive, that we shouldn't look backward, that regret is something to be avoided— It is wrong. I don't know if it's morally wrong, but it's wrong as a matter of science. And it's a completely useless blueprint for living.
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Regrets? He has a few.
Rufus: Do you have any moral regrets??
Dan: I would put the kindness regrets that I have as a moral regret. It's weird because most moral regrets are actions: I cheated on my spouse; I swindled a business partner; I hurt another human being. But for me, my moral regret is inaction. I literally am picturing certain incidents where there was clearly somebody who was being excluded, not being treated well. And I didn't do anything. I just stood by. It's not like I didn't know he was really wrong. I knew it at the time, and I didn't do anything. And I think that that's one of my most irritating moral regrets.
Episode Notes
Founder & CEO at thrv.com
2 年Great episode.
Host, Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel | Senior Editor at Large @ LinkedIn
2 年I regret not becoming fluent—truly fluent, not proficient—in a foreign language when I was young enough to do so easily.
Okay, I will go first -- I regret not learning to play an instrument as a child. Admittedly, that's an easy one ... let's try something harder -- I regret not being as thoughtful and generous of a leader as might have been in my 20s and 30s when I was building my first two companies. And I regret not putting more effort into supporting my younger siblings when I was in high school (I hope my kids are reading this ;).