40−30−30

Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist Daniel Gilbert has shown that we deal with fail­ure bet­ter than we’d expect. In stud­ies, “when peo­ple are asked to pre­dict how they’ll feel if they lose a job… or fail a con­test, they con­sis­tently over­es­ti­mate how awful they’ll feel and how long they’ll feel awful.” In other words, “we over­es­ti­mate the inten­sity and dura­tion of our dis­tress in the face of future adversity.”

While we tend to focus solely on build­ing our skill sets or expand­ing our knowl­edge, the great­est advance­ment and learn­ing most often comes from action, expe­ri­ence, and tak­ing risk. And our regrets in life reflect this. Accord­ing to Gilbert, stud­ies show that “in the long run, peo­ple of every age and in every walk of life seem to regret not hav­ing done things much more than they regret things they did.” –Michael Schwalbe, The 40−30−30 Rule, from The 99 Per­cent blog. via Destroyed by Design.