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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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
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.
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"
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?
“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...
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.
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.
Are deathbed comments the result of some instantaneous wisening caused by the circumstances or are those words regrets that have echoed through one's life?
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 34.4 ms ] threadNot 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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"
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?
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?
^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...
Sort of scary if both.