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Regret Minimisation Framework
Regret Minimisation Framework
Regret Minimisation Framework
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Overview

What potential major life change simultaneously tempts and terrifies you? Got a startup idea you've been too scared to pursue? Want to cha ...

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Actionable Takeaways
  • Use the Regret Minimisation Framework to challenge fears and doubts

This mental model helps you ...

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Limitations

The Regret Minimisation Framework tends to take an emotive approach to decision making that might lead people to take riskier actions than are advisable. At worst, when not used with other decision making considerations, it might be used to justify hasty or even reckless behaviour. To that point, rather than an considered decision making tool, it might be argued that this framework is more about helping to gain the courage and fortitude to commit to something significant that you know you want but are scared of doing. 

In Practice

Bezos starting Amazon

Bezos described how he left his well paying job and to start Amazon.

“The framework I found, which made the decision incredibly easy, was what I called — which only a nerd would call — a “regret minimisation framework. So I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, “Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.

“I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried."

Build your latticework
This model will help you to:

The regret minimisation framework is a decision-making approach that would ideally be combined with other decision making process. 

Use the following examples of connected and complementary models to weave regret minimisation framework into your broader latticework of mental models. Alternatively, discover your own connections by exploring the category list above. 

Connected models: 

  • High velocity decisions: other decision making tools from Bezos.
  • Opportunity cost: the regret minimisation framework effectively asks you to ‘live into’ the opportunity cost of inaction. 

Complementary models: 

  • Golden circle: using the framework might help connect with ‘why’.
  • Ikigai: again, the framework might help get in touch with a happier life. 
  • Risk matrix: consider risks likelihood and impact. 

This is a similar concept to the more recent ‘YOLO’, or you only live once’ approach to seizing opportunities.

Origins & Resources

The Regret Minimisation Framework was coined by Jeff Bezos, and described in Brian Christian’s  Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions.

View a short video of Bezos talking about this framework

 

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