[HN Gopher] Deathbed Advice/Regret
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Deathbed Advice/Regret
Author : paulpauper
Score : 49 points
Date : 2025-12-28 17:15 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hazn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hazn.com)
| reactordev wrote:
| It's cathartic to people to hear others cry about what they
| should have done. Makes them feel better and rationalize their
| own mistakes.
|
| Not discounting it. There's comfort in knowing you aren't alone
| or the only one to make mistakes, we all do. What's healthy is
| realizing it was a mistake, know what you did that caused it,
| learn from it, and not have it happen again due to a change of
| behavior. In work, and in life.
|
| Also, life is short, forgiveness is hard, time goes by faster
| than you think.
| _luiza_ wrote:
| Odd how some pieces of info come in one's life synced with one's
| needs. I'm in adjacent rooms with my mom and sister and we're all
| on phones. Just had the thought about regretting this in a
| potential future and then decided to continue my phone-strolls on
| HN. Found this advice/regret and it maxxed on instantaneous
| salience.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >don't value regrets packaged as advice, especially from people
| who never acted on their advice
|
| >Better advice comes from things people _actually did_.
|
| What happens when it takes quite a bit more focused effort to
| do something like _not_ be on "social" media than it does to
| idle along with the mainstream?
|
| The line is pretty blurry to begin with, and can be a moving
| target making it hard to know for sure whether you are doing,
| not doing, or being done :)
| riskable wrote:
| Deathbed regrets aren't fun at all. Deathbed _wishes_ for their
| next life are much more interesting!
|
| For example, Gil Amelio--former CEO of Apple--once expressed that
| he wanted to be reborn as a woman owning/working a vineyard in
| Southern France. That was so specific and interesting, I still
| remember it.
|
| Wishing you used social media less doesn't exactly spark the
| imagination.
|
| BTW: Yes, I know he's still alive :)
| BeetleB wrote:
| I have a love/hate relationship with deathbed advice.
|
| I still go around quoting: _No one at their deathbed says "Man, I
| wish I had spent more time at the office!"_
|
| On the flip side, I've noticed the older one is, the longer their
| list is of "things that don't matter." (e.g. Don't focus so much
| on wealth, career, etc). It was years before I realized that I've
| encountered very old people who say "None of it matters", and
| that perhaps they are not giving sage advice, but are merely
| changing preferences as they age.
| ulrashida wrote:
| Feels like people on their deathbed are allowed to express their
| thoughts, trite/trivial or not. When you are literally dying the
| last thing on your mind should be whether some blogger deems your
| thoughts valuable or cheap.
|
| May we all get to enjoy those final moments free of the need to
| perform on stage and express those things we truly wish to pass
| on to those will hear them.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >When you are literally dying the last thing on your mind
| should be whether some blogger deems your thoughts valuable or
| cheap.
|
| to be fair when you're dying the other last thing on your mind
| should probably be your regrets, so there is some truth in the
| article.
|
| When people go through dramatic events, not necessarily limited
| to their literal death, there's often a false sense of clarity.
| It's not uncommon for people with trauma or loss to suddenly
| have some conversion of one kind or the other, and it's rarely
| as good of an idea as they think it is. It seems more sincere
| because for the individual it's tied to some important event,
| but I think it's often the opposite.
| jasode wrote:
| Fyi... this blog article also mentions another article, _" The
| Deathbed Fallacy"_.
|
| HN discussed that a few months ago and the most upvoted commenter
| happened to have a terminal illness and disagreed with some of
| it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43944467
|
| He recently passed away a few months ago in August 2025. That's
| one of the few HN threads I bookmarked because he had a
| contrarian opinion that I agreed with.
| pegasus wrote:
| Thanks for the link, that was illuminating, and it confirms
| feelings I expressed in reply to a sibling comment above. I
| find bound TFA and "The Deathbed Fallacy" glibly dismissive and
| ultimately misguided.
| lordnacho wrote:
| The cynic in me thinks that people on their deathbed are about as
| well considered as people are in general: if you ask most people
| about some ordinary thing, and life regrets are indeed such a
| thing, they will give you a canned response that is the zeitgeist
| regurgitated, and they can't explain why they think what they
| think, or any related opinions they might have thought instead.
|
| Of course nowadays we have memes to help us completely avoid
| thinking at all. Ask someone what is best in life, and see how
| far you get!
|
| Only rarely does one get a considered response. That would be a
| response that
|
| 1) Acknowledges existing thought on the issue. "Socrates mentions
| regret..." "The mongols thought the open steppe was very
| important for the good life"
|
| 2) Adds personal experience. This can be totally banal, since we
| don't all live exceptional lives. "I met a girl at the bakery in
| 1975..." But being banal doesn't mean you can't use the
| experience to reflect on what regrets actually are, and whether
| you agree with some POV.
|
| With someone on their deathbed I guess it can be a bit jarring to
| subject them to the full Oxford tutorial grilling, so I can
| understand why it can end up being a bit bland.
| i_like_apis wrote:
| @dang something about this website triggering content blocking
| filters. hate to say that i don't have time to investigate but it
| seems worth mentioning
| i_like_apis wrote:
| (do people still at dang? don't read here often anymore)
| esseph wrote:
| I have 4 different plugins running right now filtering out bad
| sites, and I'm also reducing trash websites via DNS.
|
| You're going to need to be far more specific.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| There is a implicit assumption that many peoples thoughts are
| insincere before this point and its the only moment where you can
| really get what people truly value and believe in. I don't think
| that is true, in many ways you say the thing family/the people
| around you need to hear. A level of candour has taken over
| because you don't have to worry about a number of other concerns
| but at that point you often trying to comfort the people who are
| going to live with your death.
|
| There is no moment in our lives where we can be trusted to think
| deeply and express a hard to hear honest thought, and those
| people that do it often when talking about others are just mean
| and unlikeable.
| jppope wrote:
| This article is akin to something I wrote a while ago -
| https://jonpauluritis.com/articles/on-giving-better-advice/
|
| I would often do general consulting while mainly helping with
| tech, marketing or sales... and I noticed that all of my most
| important advice no one would follow. It got so extreme that I
| would often joke that "I know my advice is good because no one
| ever takes it". David Maister acknowledged a similar thing in his
| book "Strategy and the Fat Smoker: Doing What's Obvious But Not
| Easy"
|
| This article strikes a chord of course because its right in line
| with that thought. Deathbed regrets in that sense are kind of
| cheap - they knew what they were doing and did it anyway. I think
| the author is however missing a key feature of this genre though
| - those regrets are almost always things that are there, that
| have no deadline and are easily delayed. Spending time with
| family, working on hobbies or creative pursuits, and so on. What
| the regretters are failing to attribute is their lack of
| discipline... and that there is a valuable take away. The genre
| could really be just a derivative of: "I wish I had been more
| disciplined in my life"
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I think this is an infinitely more useful way of saying what
| the blogger was attempting to.
|
| There is a flawed prioritization happening that we are seeing
| have it's natural conclusion on the deathbed - delaying things
| that feel forever available (spending time with the kids) for
| things that feel urgent (that critical meeting).
|
| As you said, it takes discipline to avoid this trap. There will
| always be another urgent meeting, but your children will grow
| up and go have their own lives.
|
| "Fake urgency" is a terrible poisonous thing that often seeps
| into the work world. It is the cause of many ills and most
| deathbed regrets.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| It's a bit like climate change. Every day we wake up in our
| comfy beds, we have aircon, gore tex, big cars, hurricane proof
| buildings. We see that there's a big problem unfolding over the
| next generation or two. Or three. Maybe a crop failure or two
| will lead to high coffee prices. Perhaps avocados will
| disappear from the shelves of the supermarket for a month or
| two and we'll just pause, say "huh?". Someone might mention a
| species of shellfish we never heard of which is now extinct, or
| there'll be even more wildfires "somewhere I don't live" that
| are awful and everything but does this transatlantic flight
| _really_ make a difference or does it matter if I upgrade my
| phone /laptop/car every year... Anyways I need to get the kids
| to creche and get to work. I don't have time to think about
| this stuff.
|
| Slow burning problems are the worst because they're so easy to
| ignore until it's to late.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| I imagine this is being downvoted because it suggests
| consumers need to change their behavior. As the Reddit hive
| mind knows: corporations produce the vast majority of
| greenhouse gas emissions. But at the end of nearly all those
| supply chains are consumers, without which the enterprise
| would not exist.
|
| Ultimately it is Moloch [0] who drives us here.
|
| [0]: https://medium.com/@happybits/moloch-a-race-to-the-
| bottom-wh...
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| Individual action cannot solve a tragedy of the commons.
| Refraining from consuming the commons literally just leaves
| more for others to consume. Which they will.
|
| A tragedy of the commons can only be resolved through
| collective action. Carbon tax is the obvious example.
|
| GP technically didn't suggest otherwise, and in fact the
| same "selfishness" highlighted in that comment also drives
| people to vote against the sacrifice of collective action,
| so IMO they're correct. But if you forget about that
| (implied) step, and instead read "we should all
| individually just get rid of our ACs and stop flying, to
| solve climate change" (which GP didn't say), then that
| would be incorrect.
| roenxi wrote:
| There are a lot of people who more discipline would help, but
| in many cases it seems to me that they just don't know what to
| do. For example, if someone lying there dying has a regret like
| "I wish I hadn't worked so hard" or "I wish I had let myself be
| happier" it is hard to say that their #1 problem is that they
| lacked discipline. I know a couple of people who are extremely
| disciplined ... at making themselves unhappy for no good
| reason.
|
| I think it is more likely that a lot of people either didn't
| know how to relax - or potentially have internalised something
| about the nature of happiness that isn't true and that they
| can't let go of.
| pegasus wrote:
| People on their deathbed are not deploring their lack of
| discipline. In very real sense, what these people are mourning
| is the opposite. TFA links to another article, "The Deathbed
| Fallacy", which lists some of the most often mentioned regrets,
| namely: I wish I'd had the courage to live a
| life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
| I wish I didn't work so hard. I wish I'd had the courage
| to express my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with
| my friends. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
| I wish I didn't care that much for others' opinion.
|
| It's not about having discipline. It's about enjoying our own
| unique human life and our world with all its possibilities.
| About not working the machine until we become machine-like
| ourselves. If I need flex some will-power muscles and employ a
| well-oiled personal productivity system to get me to spend time
| with those friends, it's either that I've become a machine,
| only gaining satisfaction from climbing whatever ladders my
| ambition set its sight on, or I'm slacking off on another
| important human life-task: finding and making friends which
| bring joy into and enrich my life.
|
| Yes, deathbed regrets aren't actionable self-help advice. They
| are confessions, really, and no, they are not cheap. They are
| messages from those who've reached the fifth level of relating
| with death, that of acceptance, whereas we're still loitering
| on the first one, denial [1]. They uncover something deep and
| painful in ourselves, they say most of us are missing something
| important when we are afraid to go the uncharted routes and
| follow the safe pre-written ones instead.
|
| [1] "The Denial of Death" is a book worth checking out.
| jbs789 wrote:
| This is a tough one.
|
| An advanced cancer diagnosis changes the mind and brings a level
| of clarity that I had never before experienced, about what is
| important.
|
| Being forced to face one's mortality is not pleasant but it can
| be enlightening. And then truly enjoy the experience of being.
|
| I think the question is, if everyone has similar "deathbed"
| advice, then what can you learn from that?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| In software architecture, we often see people rebuild systems
| from scratch, reproduce the exact same flaws, and end up with
| the same broken system they sought to replace.
|
| The problem is always that they do not understand the problem.
| The problem was not the framework, the language, the compute
| model. It was the problem model.
|
| Having spent a lot of time around that "high driven successful
| ceo" type, there's a lot of ego involved. There is ego in being
| needed in meetings. There is ego in working late. There is ego
| in being the only one who can deliver the thing.
|
| Spoiler, most managers are aware of the ego trap and know how
| to press that button to get more work from you.
|
| You can't solve the deathbed regret problem by just reading
| deathbed regrets and swearing to travel or spend time with
| family. You have to address the root cause of the problematic
| behavior - ego, dislike of your kids, not actually valuing
| travel, etc.
|
| Then the ongoing work of prioritizing can happen.
| zingababba wrote:
| It sucks that you had to go through that. I often wonder how
| close psychedelics bring you to that same sensation. I've had
| some harrowing trips where at the end of it all I can think
| about is mending or bolstering relationships which I will often
| spend considerable time doing in the days/weeks after. I'll
| often reach out to people I haven't talked to in months/years
| just because I suddenly feel like it's important. It obviously
| wanes though.
| pegasus wrote:
| It's not really about learning, as in absorbing information.
| It's more of a practice: _memento mori_.
|
| Wishing you health and healing.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| What an obnoxious piece. Sorry people's deathbed regrets don't
| entertain you, bro.
|
| Most of us live our lives under the illusion of being in control.
| As death approaches, many people realize they cannot control
| their fate and often observe or think of choices they did not
| make, when they had that agency.
|
| As my mom reached the end, she was very worried about things
| being taken care of. The house insurance, the taxes, a few other
| items. Then she talked about things we wouldn't experience (She
| was annoyed that she didn't get to read Robert Caro's still
| unpublished last book together), and then a few regrets about
| things that were done or not done.
|
| This translation of Aeschylus always captures this subject for
| me:
|
| "He who learns must suffer, and even in our sleep pain that
| cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own
| despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace
| of God"
|
| Wisdom comes from suffering sometimes, and sometimes the most
| important wisdom you learn seems simple and trite, or is it?
| Xcelerate wrote:
| "Live next to your relatives because if they get in a car
| accident and you live across the country you won't be there to
| tell them goodbye."
|
| ^Another one I've never understood. Like geez, hopefully my
| daughter doesn't give up her life dreams just based on the
| possibility I might be in a freak accident one day...
| boothby wrote:
| When my dad was battling cancer a decade ago, the distance from
| Seattle to Vancouver was maddening. In the end, I regretted not
| just taking some months off of school to spend time with him in
| what would be his last year. But now, it's my mom's time
| around... and I haven't moved back or taken extensive leave.
| But I'm calling her often enough that we're talking about daily
| life more more than cancer; enough that we run out of things to
| talk about. Proximity is nice, but contact is the most
| important thing.
| copenja wrote:
| Most deathbed advice I've encountered resolves around wishing
| they had accomplished less and focused more on friends/family.
| For me at least, it is a good reminder. YMMV.
| bflesch wrote:
| This makes a lot of sense. Also it is a beautiful website. IMO
| just the pink bar at the side of the quoted text should have less
| saturation.
| ossicones wrote:
| I shared this with my partner who works in palliative care. He
| said that it's rare to hear people expressing deathbed regrets
| like this. What he hears more of is people saying that their
| illness is God's punishment for a behavior pretty universally
| accepted as bad, especially when there's substance abuse
| involved.
| kareiva wrote:
| Asking accomplished individuals about whether they regret working
| too hard is sooooo biased.
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