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- April 2012A palliative care nurse called Bronnie Ware made a list of the
- biggest regrets
- of the dying. Her list seems plausible. I could see
- myself — can see myself — making at least 4 of these
- 5 mistakes.If you had to compress them into a single piece of advice, it might
- be: don't be a cog. The 5 regrets paint a portrait of post-industrial
- man, who shrinks himself into a shape that fits his circumstances,
- then turns dutifully till he stops.The alarming thing is, the mistakes that produce these regrets are
- all errors of omission. You forget your dreams, ignore your family,
- suppress your feelings, neglect your friends, and forget to be
- happy. Errors of omission are a particularly dangerous type of
- mistake, because you make them by default.I would like to avoid making these mistakes. But how do you avoid
- mistakes you make by default? Ideally you transform your life so
- it has other defaults. But it may not be possible to do that
- completely. As long as these mistakes happen by default, you probably
- have to be reminded not to make them. So I inverted the 5 regrets,
- yielding a list of 5 commands
- Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you
- think; cultivate friendships; be happy.
- which I then put at the top of the file I use as a todo list.
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