Regret isn't an problem with your past, it is a problem with your current self's opinion of the past. You are judging your past self based on your current self but that is unfair and you might want to think how that impacts your life going forward. Making decisions based on what you think your future self will approve of doesn't seem like it'd have the best results.
I think I agree with this; the usual clichés about regret place a sort of bias towards how one feels at the end of one's life, but just because it's the last opinion doesn't necessarily mean it should win.
I vehemently disagree. Making decisions based on your future self would like is most generally the best thing you can do. Maybe you should really go out for a run even though you don't want to. Your future self will thank you. Maybe you should start working on that thing that is due soon. Your future self will thank you. And there are countless more examples. The practically write themselves.
The examples you've given here are both extremely short term and are presumably things that help you achieve goals now-you wants.
I know what I want for myself in five years. I don't and to large degree can't know what me-in-five-years will wish I had wanted.
My approach is to go for the things I want for myself now, while always being cognizant of providing options and opportunities for the future. It's not perfect, and it never will be because I don't have perfect foresight. But it works well enough.
None of those are future in a planning sense. They are immediate goals with immediate impacts. Getting exercise regularly pays off almost immediately and continues to pay of day to day. Finishing a project today has the immediate reward of finishing it and not having to worry about it anymore. The example was your 10 year from now self. And while you might come up with some 10-year span anecdotes, I don't see it being a good heuristic for living your life in general.
They are definitely future planning things. IF you don't go for a run now you won't notice tomorrow, you won't notice in a week. You won't even notice in a month. But compare a person who is 50 who was active for his entire life and one who isn't and the differences can be stark.
I've been thinking about this and IMO really it is more about the focus on regret as a motivator for action. Regret is a negative emotion, so this is basically a strategy of pain avoidance. I think it is this aspect that is the problem, not the future forecasting. That you are optimizing for pain avoidance and not your happiness.
Can’t we say that an inactive person just lived through their life quicker because they didn’t spend time on these activities? Absolute years of life isn’t a meaningful metric here, imo.
I love this take on regret, and it really resonates with how I reason about it.
I wrote a short blog post on the idea of judging your past self based on your current values: https://www.samvitjain.com/blog/regret/. Curious what you think!
