Moving regret in front of our decisions

Moving regret in front of our decisions

Philosophers agree that regret is one of the most intense emotions we feel, but they have argued about whether it is productive or useful. Nietzsche said that remorse was “adding to the first act of stupidity a second.” Thoreau, on the other hand, praised the power of regret: “Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.”

The problem isn’t so much whether regret is an unproductive emotion. It’s that regret occurs after the fact, instead of before. As Nietzsche points out, regret can do nothing to change what has already happened. We just wallow in remorse about something over which we no longer have any control. But if regret occurred before a decision instead of after, the experience of regret might get us to change a choice likely to result in a bad outcome. Then we could embrace Thoreau’s view and harness the power of regret because it would serve a valuable purpose. It would be helpful, then, if we could get regret to do some time traveling of its own, moving before our decisions instead of after them. That way, regret might be able to keep us from making a bad bet. In addition, it wouldn’t, as Nietzsche implied, rear its head later by causing us to make a remorse-fueled second mistake.

Morning Jerry regretted Night Jerry’s decision to stay up late, but it was too late for him to do anything about it. When we see the retirement-savings shortfall in this country, there is no doubt that many of the future, retired versions of us are going to regret the financial allocation decisions that younger-us made, after it is too late to fix it. The age-progression imaging works to address this issue of regret occurring when it’s already too late. By giving us a look at the retirement-aged version of ourselves, it gives us a chance to experience some regret that we didn’t plan adequately for retirement before we’ve made inadequate plans. That was one of the purposes of my loss limit in poker. Because of the loss-limit agreement I had made with myself and my group, I ran the conversation in my head that I’d be forced to have when I explained why I kept playing beyond my limit. It gave me a chance to regret the decision before I bought more chips.

One of our time-travel goals is to create moments like that, where we can interrupt an in-the-moment decision and take some time to consider the decision from the perspective of our past and future. We can then create a habit routine around these decision interrupts to encourage this perspective taking, asking ourselves a set of simple questions at the moment of the decision designed to get future-us and past-us involved. We can do this by imagining how future-us is likely to feel about the decision or by imagining how we might feel about the decision today if past-us had made it. The approaches are complementary; whether you choose to travel to the past or travel to the future depends solely on what approach you find most effective.

Business journalist and author Suzy Welch developed a popular tool known as 10-10-10 that has the effect of bringing future-us into more of our in-the-moment decisions. “Every 10-10-10 process starts with a question. . . . [W]hat are the consequences of each of my options in ten minutes? In ten months? In ten years?” This set of questions triggers mental time travel that cues that accountability conversation (also encouraged by a truthseeking decision group). We can build on Welch’s tool by asking the questions through the frame of the past: “How would I feel today if I had made this decision ten minutes ago? Ten months ago? Ten years ago?” Whichever frame we choose, we draw on our past experiences (including similar decisions we may have regretted) in answering the questions, recruiting into the decision those less-reactive brain pathways that control executive functioning.

In poker, because the decisions are all made in the moment and the consequences are big and immediate, routines like 10-10-10 are a survival skill. I recognized in poker that in the same way that I was not the best judge of how I was playing after losing a certain amount of money, I was also not the best judge of the quality of my poker after about six to eight hours of play. Just as we can convince ourselves we are sober enough to drive, it is easy for poker players to convince themselves that they are alert enough to keep playing after many hours of intense, intellectually taxing work. In my more rational moments, away from the tables, I knew I would be better off if I played just six to eight hours per session. When I reached that point in a session and considered continuing past that time limit, I could use a 10-10-10-like strategy to recruit my past- and future-self: How have I felt when I kept playing in the past? How has it generally worked out? When I look back, do I feel I was playing my best? This routine of asking myself these questions helped mitigate the in-the-moment risk that, as I was losing my mental edge, I might try to convince myself that the game was so great that I had to keep playing.

Moving regret in front of a decision has numerous benefits. First, obviously, it can influence us to make a better decision. Second, it helps us treat ourselves (regardless of the actual decision) more compassionately after the fact. We can anticipate and prepare for negative outcomes. By planning ahead, we can devise a plan to respond to a negative outcome instead of just reacting to it. We can also familiarize ourselves with the likelihood of a negative outcome and how it will feel. Coming to peace with a bad outcome in advance will feel better than refusing to acknowledge it, facing it only after it has happened.

After-the-fact regret can consume us. Like all emotions, regret initially feels intense but gets better with time. Time-travel strategies can help us remember that the intensity of what we feel now will subside over time. And that helps reduce the emotion we feel in the moment, making it less likely that we will prove Nietzsche right and add a second act of stupidity to the first.