Hey there!

How’s it going?

This is an exciting milestone of sorts for me—the 26th issue of this newsletter. I’ve been at it for half a year. I’ve learned a lot in that time. Mostly, I am grateful you keep reading what I write each week. Thank you.

OK… Here’s what I have for you today:

• One big thing. When you look back on your life, is there a pattern to the types of decisions you regret? We’ll examine the research and compare Robert Frost to Gwyneth Paltrow. ⚖️

• You have to check this out. Microplastics and clear book summaries. 📚

• Tools and tech. Let’s press some coffee. ☕

Are you ready to jump in? 🦘

1️⃣ ONE BIG THING

The beauty of irreversible decisions.

Do you ever wonder what might have been?

Would things be different if you caught the train instead of missing it?

How much would your life change if you were ten minutes early instead of ten minutes late?

Do you remember this movie premise? Hint: Gwenyth Paltrow.

I was 26 and living in Denver when I saw Sliding Doors in the theater. I remember it partly for introducing me to the singer Dido, whose song Thank You appeared for the first time on the soundtrack. My CD player spun the all-Dido station for a while after that. 

It’s one of those rare movies that gave birth to a new term: sliding doors.

The movie follows Paltrow through two parallel "what if" lives. In one, she misses a train just as the sliding doors close. In the other, she boards the train just in time as the sliding doors close behind her.

As the trailer frames it: Two lives. Two chances. And a destiny that lies behind two sliding doors.

(If you missed it in 1998, here is the trailer. It’s currently free with Amazon Prime.)

The Road Not Taken.

You’ve surely encountered Robert Frost’s earlier and far more famous version of this idea:

What lesson are we supposed to learn from this poem?

Forge your own path in life. Don’t follow the herd. Go your own way to find success.

But hang on. Let’s consider it more carefully.

How does Frost know the path taken was the best one? He never got to compare it to the other path, did he?

As Frost approached the diverging paths, he didn’t have the luxury Paltrow had (and surely his skin was not as well moisturized). In Sliding Doors, we get to see the full implications of two different versions of Paltrow’s life play out.

Your life is more like Frost’s. It’s full of decisions. As you travel down life’s path, you veer left at a fork in the road, then left again at the next fork in the road, and right at the next. On and on. Taken together, your life is simply the sum of these choices.

When do we regret the path not taken?

There is a lot of fascinating research on the feeling of regret, and I'll explore more of it in future issues of this newsletter.

Here’s what might surprise you: Regret can be a positive and helpful part of life and has evolutionary benefits.

When people reflect on their lives, what do you think they regret most?

We don’t have to guess.

One study gathered nine research papers measuring life's regrets to determine overall trends (all the studies were done in the US).

The most commonly reported life regrets fell into five categories (in descending order of frequency): education, career, romance, parenting, and self-improvement.

Due to the structure of the research, these categories are broad. But why did these five categories top the list of life’s more common regrets?

Education tops the list in nearly all of the studies (e.g., I should have studied harder, gone to college (or not gone), or pursued a different degree).

Why do you regret some things and not others?

The key factor leading to regret is whether you still have the opportunity to change things.

Some forks in the road are permanent. If you were offered a job in 1998 and didn't take it, you can't return to 1998 and accept it. The ship sailed.

The researchers found that what I call ‘closed loop decisions’ do not foster regret nearly as much as decisions that can be reversed.

If you didn’t get a marine biology degree in your 20s, you can still get one (maybe George Costanza will be in your class). From online learning platforms like Coursera to all manner of universities, Americans of any age have access to broad educational opportunities. (For this reason, the researchers speculate education might not top the list of regrets in some countries.)

On the other hand, some life decisions stay with us as troubling open loops. This is what fuels the feeling of regret.

You can imagine the evolutionary advantage here. Where the potential for corrective action remains—where you can revisit past decisions and forge a different, more beneficial course of action—regret is the emotion that motivates you to do so.

This works the same way that feeling hungry makes you take action to find food.

The paradox of choice.

This is a curious phenomenon, right? Most people say they like choices, and they like to keep their options open.

The reality is, as I have discussed extensively in this newsletter, we humans are awful at accurately predicting what will make us happy in the future. 

Imagine you take a photography class. You take a series of stunning photos of spring flowers near your house. You learn how to develop the film. The class provides photo paper to create one 11x14 print. You review the negatives and select your favorite sunflower photo to print and take home for framing.

At the end of the class, the instructor mentions that, for an additional fee, you can come back anytime to print a different photo than the one you first chose. If you don't pay the add-on fee now, you must retake the entire class to access the dark room.

Is it a good idea to take this offer? After all, why not leave your options open in case the photo you chose looks weird when you hang it in your living room?

You are really tempted to pay this fee, aren’t you? I mean, just in case.

Now, consider what we have learned about regret.

One of these options is a closed loop (your choice of the sunflower print is final), and one creates an open loop (you have the option to decide on a different flower photo later).

Here's what the research tells us… as this exact scenario has been studied repeatedly: Students choosing a picture from a photography class; people picking a free poster in a giveaway (where you can come back and exchange it, or not); and more.

In every study, the people who did not have the chance to revisit their past choices were notably more satisfied with the item they selected. I don’t mean they were happier with their choice; they fundamentally liked the item itself more.

Here is the kicker: As Barry Schwartz explains in The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More (easily in my top ten best behavioral science books), in talking about these reversible choice studies:

“The participants had no idea that keeping the option open to change their minds would affect their satisfaction with the thing they chose.”

Why do closed loops increase satisfaction?

So, how does this work? Why are we more satisfied with irreversible decisions?

Think about what happens when you make an irreversible decision.

Imagine you are deciding between a beach and mountain vacation. If you choose a beach vacation, you will enjoy sun and sand relaxation, but you don’t get to hike or read a book by a fire. If you choose to rent a cabin in the mountains, you will enjoy hikes and cozy fires, but you will forfeit the suntan and sea breezes.

You finally decide. You book a rental house on the beach, and the payment is nonrefundable. Your friends buy plane tickets to meet you there. You’re locked in.

This is when your brain bursts on the scene, ready to help!

You will non-consciously begin to amplify the merits of the beach trip and diminish the benefits of the mountain trip. I’ve been working my ass off. Why would I want to hike on vacation?

Psychologists call this process the workings of the "psychological immune system," and its powers go well beyond increasing satisfaction with irreversible choices. In my newsletter, Rose-Colored Distortions, I described a phenomenon called rosy retrospection, a cognitive bias that causes you to remember the past more positively than you actually experienced it.

Once again, you can imagine the evolutionary benefit of these adaptations. Extended rumination about irreversible decisions can lead to action paralysis. Evolution knows paralysis is not good for survival.

Misunderstanding Frost.

Let’s return to Frost’s two diverging roads.

The quote I included before is the poem’s famous line, right? But here is the poem’s complete final stanza:

So the person in the poem is really saying: When I am old—somewhere ages and ages hence—I will claim that the road less traveled made all the difference.

In other words, when they look back in old age, they will rationalize the choice they made in the woods as the best decision ever. Ever!

They will be genuinely satisfied with their choice.

No regrets.

Thank you for being a Second Act Creator subscriber. I put 6-12 hours into each newsletter, trying to provide as much value as possible.

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See you next Sunday,

Kevin