Why you'll regret what you didn't do more than what you tried and failed
Over a lifetime, people regret the things they didn't try far more than the things they tried and got wrong. That isn't a motivational slogan; it's one of the most consistent findings in the psychology of regret, replicated for three decades across cultures and age groups. The failure is survivable and eventually forgettable. The gap is permanent.
What did the Cornell regret research actually find?
In the 1990s, two Cornell psychologists — Tom Gilovich and Victoria Medvec — asked people to reflect on their biggest regrets. The answers split neatly by time frame. In the short term, people regret their actions more: the embarrassing thing said, the investment that went wrong, the relationship rushed into. You act, it fails, you feel it — the counterfactual ("if only I hadn't") is fresh and vivid.
But over the long term, the pattern reverses, completely and decisively. Across a lifetime, people regret their inactions far more: the job they didn't take, the person they didn't tell, the thing they didn't build, the life they kept meaning to live. The original study was published in 1995, and the finding has held through replications since. In a 2018 paper, Gilovich added a refinement: the deepest regrets cluster around failures to live up to our ideal selves — the person we imagined becoming — rather than failures of duty or behavior.
"In the long run, people of every age and in every walk of life seem to regret not having done things much more than they regret things they did." — Thomas Gilovich
Why does inaction hurt longer than failure?
Because of how the mind metabolizes the two. The psychological immune system is good at rationalizing actions that went wrong: at least I tried; I learned something; it made a good story. Failed actions get processed, filed, and eventually defanged. Inactions resist that processing. There is nothing to metabolize — no outcome, no lesson, no story. The question what if I had? has no answer, so it stays open, and open loops are precisely what minds return to at 3 a.m. We don't lie awake at sixty-five thinking about the time we tried something and failed. We lie awake thinking about the version of ourselves we never became because we never tried.
What the dying regret
Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, spent eight years recording the most common regrets of people in their last weeks. The one she heard most: "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." Of her five most-heard regrets, four describe inaction — not living authentically, not expressing feelings, not staying in touch with friends, not letting oneself be happier. The deathbed data and the laboratory data agree.
How to actually use this
- Run the regret test. Project yourself to eighty, looking back at the decision in front of you. Which will that person regret more — trying, or not trying? For most reversible decisions, the answer is immediate.
- Price the inaction. Action has visible costs; inaction's costs arrive silently. Write down what staying put costs you in one year, five, ten.
- Don't confuse this with recklessness. The research doesn't say act on everything. Irreversible, high-stakes moves that affect other people deserve real deliberation — there's a framework for telling the difference.
This essay is adapted from F*ck It, Do It by Chadi Nassar — a book about the gap between wanting and doing, written by someone who spent years on the wrong side of this research. Read the first chapter free.
FAQ
Do people regret action or inaction more?
Short term: action. Long term: inaction, decisively — per Gilovich and Medvec's Cornell research, replicated across cultures since 1995.
Why does inaction regret last longer?
The mind rationalizes failed attempts but can't close the loop on attempts never made. "What if I had?" stays permanently open.
What do dying people regret most?
Per Bronnie Ware: not living true to themselves. Four of her five most-heard end-of-life regrets are regrets of inaction.