Many in general, a few in particular

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       Most of my many regrets are about things I didn’t do rather than things I did (that is, errors of omission rather than errors of commission).

      For example, I don’t regret going to MIT, but I have regrets about how I ended up there the first time, including:

·      Not requesting an interview with the admissions office at Harvard (we lived nearby), instead of accepting an alumni interview with the father of a high school classmate with whom I didn’t get along.

·      Not applying to Stanford, because they had a later deadline, I was tired of the whole process (getting recommendations, etc.) and I had already been accepted at MIT.

      I’ve been laid off from jobs six or seven times, so I’ve obviously made some mistakes in addition to having had some bad luck (the mix is infinitely and pointlessly debatable). With work, regrets include:

·      Being too restrictive in where I was willing to live and work. I would have had a lot of opportunities in New York City, but I didn’t want to live there even for just a few years (I had been there many times and thought of it as a nice place to visit but …).

·      Choosing the wrong offer of the two I received after getting my bachelor’s (hindsight is 20/20).

·      Not preparing for tricky questions about smoking when I interviewed for a job after business school with Philip Morris in Switzerland.

      My wife Laura is more of a worrier than I am, so we’re like the old Jack Sprat nursery rhyme (“Jack Sprat could eat no fat, His wife could eat no lean. And so between them both, you see, they licked the platter clean”).

      The thing about a worrier is that whatever they’re worrying about will eventually either happen or not happen, so they can move on to worrying about something else. They live in the present and the future.

      Regretters (like me), on the other hand, live too much in the past. If you have a good long-term memory as I do, regrets may fade but they never completely go away (can’t forget about them and/or forgive yourself), so as they accumulate. They can affect your happiness and success.

      Satchel Paige, the first African American major league baseball pitcher, said “don’t look back; something might be gaining on you.” I know what he meant.

Eric Small, now retired, worked as an economist and market/survey researcher.