End-of-life regrets point back to people, not achievements

The Short Version

Robert Waldinger reports that almost the number one regret among participants in the 86-year Harvard Study of Adult Development was spending too much time at work and not enough with people they cared about. He adds that what they were proudest of was never their achievements, but being a good mentor, partner, parent or boss [3]. Death doula Alua Arthur hears regrets about time at the office and about living for other people's expectations, but she says people regret far more how they did not show up for the people they loved, leaving love, thanks and apology unsaid [2]. Mel Robbins picked Waldinger's regret answer as one of the moments her listeners replayed most in her podcast year [3], and Arthur Brooks names as his deepest regret neglecting his parents, and as his worst moments the late hours at the office chasing the admiration of strangers instead of time with his small children [4]. Waldinger, Arthur and Brooks each describe acting on these lessons before the end: a changed social routine, three questions about love asked now, and a family that lives together [1][2][4].

Table of contents

What They Said

Robert Waldinger: what 86 years of lives add up to

Waldinger's evidence comes from following whole lives. The Harvard Study of Adult Development began in 1938 with two groups of young men: 268 Harvard undergraduates and 456 boys from Boston's poorest families, who entered the study at around age 12 [1]. It has continued for 86 years [1]. The researchers used yearly questionnaires, in-home interviews every ten years and medical records, and later added blood draws and MRI scans [1]. The study also expanded to include spouses and children [1]. Waldinger notes that most longitudinal studies end before ten years because too many people drop out, but this one kept going [1].

When Robbins asked what participants said as they looked back near the end, Waldinger answered in two parts [3]:

"The biggest regrets, two categories. One was, I wish I hadn't spent so much time at work. I wish I had spent more time with people I cared about. Almost the number one regret. And then the other regret, and this came more from women than from men, was, I wish I hadn't worried so much about what other people thought." [3]

He then turned to what people were proud of. This part speaks most directly to the question of people versus achievement:

"The things that people were proudest of were not their achievements. And many people had achieved a lot. It was people. It was, I was a good mentor. I was a good partner. I was a good parent. I was a good boss. You know, it was always about the relationships. Even among people who had won huge prizes or gotten big accolades, that's not what they named when they were looking back on their life." [3]

The Harvard group included John F. Kennedy and longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee [1]. Waldinger reports that even participants who had won major prizes did not name those prizes when they looked back [3]. The answers that sound like work roles, a good mentor or a good boss, describe how people treated others, not what they produced [3].

The regret findings sit on top of the study's headline result, which is about health as much as happiness. In Waldinger's words, "the people who live the longest stay the healthiest and are the happiest are the people who have more relationships with other people and warmer relationships with other people" [1]. The team looked back at participants at age 50 to see what predicted who would be healthy and happy at 80. It was not cholesterol levels. It was how satisfied people were in their relationships [1]. The researchers did not believe it at first and re-analysed the data. Then other studies of different groups found the same thing, and that convergence, Waldinger says, is how you know you have a scientific truth [1].

On the second regret, worrying about what others think, Robbins asked how to stop. His answer pointed back to people:

"Well, it's realizing that first of all, most of that's not going to matter when we're dead. Right? But what will matter? Am I treating people well? That will matter and people will remember it even after we're gone." [3]

He likes a saying that makes the work regret concrete: "20 years from now, the only people who will remember whether you worked late are your children" [1]. In the compilation episode he adds that nobody will care whether your curtains were the right shade of blue [3].

Waldinger also explains why people chase the wrong things. Money, status and possessions are measurable "badges of achievement", like a watch counting steps. They appeal because they look like a place where we can finally be done [1]. People come to him upset that they are not billionaires yet, but they cannot say what the billion dollars would be for [1]. In his view life has no final resting place, only an ongoing process of change, and even as a Zen teacher he wakes up some mornings confused or sad [1].

He does not wave money away. Having basic needs met, such as food, housing, medicine and education, is vital, and until those needs are met people are significantly less happy [1]. He mentions research estimates of around $75,000 a year in the US and notes that the number is somewhat arbitrary. Beyond that point, he calls chasing happiness through wealth "a fool's errand" [1].

Waldinger applies the finding to himself

His most persuasive moment may be the admission that his own study changed how he lives. Once his children had left home, he saw the danger in his position: "I'm a Harvard professor I could work 24 seven", and, as he put it, "I realized that I could work all the time and not have any friends and then I was looking at my own study and saying wait a minute friendships are kind of important" [1].

What he did about it was modest. He started texting friends and making dinner dates himself rather than leaving them to his wife. Of her he says, "she's the social director has been for years" [1]. He began suggesting walks, coffee and beers. In his words, "what I made myself do was pay more attention to my relationships and less attention to my work" [1].

He grants that seniority makes this easier. Younger people, he acknowledges, are under "all those pressures of making a living and making a career" [1]. Even so, he says they can "keep in as our north star connections including at work because you can do this at work you can make more friends at work" [1]. The conversation also notes that between the ages of 20 and 60, the people you work with are the people you spend most of your days with [1].

His closing advice turns the findings into rules of thumb. First: "invest in the people who you care about and invest in the things that you care about" [1]. Second, when you are in doubt, "make kindness your default setting", which means asking "what would be the kinder thing to do and do that" [1].

Alua Arthur: what the bedside sounds like

Arthur arrives at a similar place from the other direction. She has no cohort data. Her evidence is her work as a death doula, which she defines as a non-medical support person for the dying person and their whole circle of support, offering emotional, logistical, practical and spiritual help [2]. She describes the relationship with hospice as collaborative [2]. By the dying person she means anyone who has come to recognise their mortality, which includes healthy people making end-of-life plans [2].

Asked directly what the biggest deathbed regrets are, she lays out three strands:

"They're mostly around how they spent their time, how they lived about being authentic. I wish I'd lived a life for me, not for my parents or society or my partner or my kids, but what was most authentic for me. People also often regret how they spend their time, you know, spending more of it at the office or or not playing fickle ball or not doing the things that they really want to do with their time. I also find that people regret how they showed up for the people that they loved or didn't show up for the people that they loved. Probably more. Far more how they didn't show up. Not saying they're, I love you and thank you. Or please forgive me. That's a big one." [2]

Two things stand out. First, her regret about time at the office closely matches the work regret Waldinger found, although she comes to it from a different setting and by a different method [2][3]. Second, within the relationship strand she adds her own emphasis. People regret far more how they did not show up at all, and the gap is filled with specific missing sentences of love, thanks and apology [2].

She also notes how late the reckoning tends to come: "That's something that I think a lot about, that it's only when it's over." [2] And she describes a scene she sees too often:

"Too often I see people at the deathbed where they're wishing for that, you know, magic moment where that person that they've been loving from afar because they did something or the other person did something, they're waiting for that to be reconciled and it just isn't." [2]

Three questions, asked early

Her remedy is three questions phrased in the past tense, as a dying person would ask them: "who did I love, how did I love and was I loved?" [2] She means them for now. In her words, "those questions are available for us right now and should be available to us right now." [2] She adds, "I don't say should very often, but this is one where it's wildly, wildly important for us to think about how we relate." [2] The point, she says, is to look at "what's still, what's still sticky between us" [2].

She builds this into a yearly review around her birthday. Her reason: "being able to celebrate another year reminds me that I'm still here, but one day I won't be like, I may not see my next one." [2]

The review starts with the practical list:

• who makes decisions if you cannot
• your views on life support
• what you want done with your body
• what services you want
• your possessions, dependents and important information [2]

Then come the harder questions, such as "What kind of death do I want to experience?" and "How do I feel about my life currently?" [2]. She also asks who you need to say I love you to, and "Who do I need to forgive?" [2]. A companion exercise is to draw your lifespan as a line from birth to death, place yourself on it, and ask what you want to experience in the time that remains [2].

Her reason for looking at death at all is the line Robbins opened the episode with: "Our deaths are practically begging us to live. When I'm thinking about my death, I can see very clearly who I want to be." [2] Thinking about her death, she says, "allows me to see exactly who I've become. And knowing that I'm still living, I have an opportunity to change it." [2] She calls her death her best advisor [2].

Arthur's own story of the authenticity regret

Arthur's vocation began with her own version of the authenticity regret. She spent years as a legal aid attorney doing work that, in her words, "while very important and noble wasn't really working for me" [2]. She describes it this way: "I'd put on somebody else's life. It felt like I was wearing somebody else's skin" [2].

She developed a heavy depression and went to Cuba on medical leave [2]. On a bus there she met a 36-year-old woman with uterine cancer who was visiting the places she most wanted to see before she died [2]. As the woman described her deathbed, Arthur pictured her own and did not like what she saw [2].

In the passage she reads from her book, the self she wants to be at death "is a woman who has filled her life cup all the way up and has built a life she feels comfortable leaving." [2] She also wonders about the other passengers: "how many unwritten books undeclared loves and unfulfilled dreams like dormant here in these seats and in these bodies" [2].

Legacy is made of how we treat people

Her account of legacy also points to people rather than position. "legacies aren't optional," she says, and then: "we're all leaving one every single day. Even people that we think of as those that maybe don't hold a big position in society are still living a huge legacy." [2]

Her example is an unhoused man who lived on the corner where a woman got her coffee every morning [2]. The woman talked with him over the years. After he died, she came to Arthur to plan a ceremony in his honour, and about 400 people showed up [2]. Arthur explains why: "because of the impact that he had had on her life, because of how she talked about him, because of the gems he dropped on her, because he was a touch point." [2]

Mel Robbins: the clip her audience kept replaying

Robbins plays two roles in these sources. She is the interviewer who drew out Waldinger's findings, and in her year-end compilation she reports how those findings landed with her listeners [1][3]. Her team went through 43 experts across 115 episodes and used shares, comments, YouTube rewatches and letters to pick the eight moments that resonated most [3].

The last two were about regret. She explains: "it was overwhelming how moved you were by what these two experts had to say to you about what's actually important in life and what's not. They gave you perspective in an instant." [3] Of Waldinger's interview, she says there was "one moment in particular that you listened to over and over again", and that moment was his regret answer [3].

Her commentary on the clip states the point plainly. She says it is "so easy to get sucked up and work and all the stressful things going on that you forget that at the end of the day, it's about the people in your life." [3] She follows it with "That's what actually matters." [3]

She also says the clip changed what she does: "it certainly made me prioritize my relationships both with my adult kids and my parents and the friends that I need to make more of an effort to see." [3]

Her own story in the Waldinger interview follows the same arc. She looks at a photo taken hours after she and her husband Chris got engaged, when she was 27 [1]. Back then, she recalls, she was "maniacally focused on making money. And what is my next career move? And how does Chris feel about me?" [1] She was a public defender earning $19,000 a year in New York City and was living in fight-or-flight from untreated childhood trauma and anxiety [1]. Her metaphor is that she was "obsessed with the curtains on the window" and had no idea how to enjoy the view [1].

Asked what matters to her now, she says: "if I had to boil it down, it would be relationships. It would be my relationship with Chris, the people I work with, our children, our friends, family." [1] Waldinger says this shift is typical. As people age, awareness that life is short tends to make them happier, because they start savouring life and shed what doesn't matter [1].

The other regret voice in Robbins's compilation

Robbins paired Waldinger with hospice physician Dr. Zach Bush. Bush says the number one regret he hears from the dying is I was performing the whole time, meaning they never dared to be themselves [3]. His message is that people often realise at the end that they were whole all along: "It's not something to be achieved. You've always been whole." [3]

Robbins closes the episode by urging listeners to drop the act, stop waiting for the perfect moment, actually enjoy their coffee, call friends, laugh with their kids and spend time with their parents while they can [3]. The summary of the episode puts the lesson as relationships and authenticity valued over achievements and approval at the end of life [3].

The same compilation includes a story about saying the words in time. NYU neuroscientist Dr. Wendy Suzuki's family, third-generation Japanese Americans, never said I love you [3]. Her father was later diagnosed with dementia, and she wanted to start saying it before it was too late, so she asked her parents and they agreed [3].

The next week her father, who "was in the middle of dementia", said it first. In her words, "he remembered that we had agreed to say I love you" [3]. As a memory researcher she explains why: "emotional resonance makes hippocampal dependent memory stick" [3]. Robbins's takeaway is that it only takes one person to change a family dynamic [3].

Arthur Brooks: the regret he lives with, and the second chance he took

Brooks, a Harvard professor who has spent two decades studying and teaching the science of happiness, does not report findings about dying people [4]. What he offers is a first-person confession of the regret, and an account of why capable people walk into it with open eyes [4].

His deepest regret goes back to his twenties. He was pursuing a career as a classical French horn player in Barcelona, neglected his parents, saw them a couple of times a year, and then lost them before he knew them as he wished [4].

He calls himself "a self-objectifying success addict" and describes the cost precisely:

"my worst moments, Lewis, or when I spent the 14th hour at the office looking for the admiration of strangers as opposed to the first hour with my kids. When they were little and they grew up. I wanted to be special more than I wanted to be happy." [4]

The admiration of strangers is his diagnosis of what went wrong. He draws on Thomas Aquinas's idea of idols, which he traces to Aristotle: "Money, power, pleasure, or honor." [4] Each one feels like it leads to what you want, but it works like salt water and leaves you thirstier [4]. Honor includes fame, prestige and the admiration of strangers [4].

His own idol is honor. He traces it to childhood, when adults praised him for playing the French horn [4].

He tells of a very wealthy woman in finance who listed everything wrong in her marriage, family, health and faith, and who already knew the remedy [4]. Asked why she did not act, she said it was "because I've always chosen to be special rather than happy" [4]. The logic, as he describes it, is that anyone can have loving relationships, but not everyone can build a company [4].

He offers an evolutionary explanation. Humans evolved in small kin groups where rising in the hierarchy brought food and mates, and that drive now shows up as a hunger for followers and status [4]. Knowing this, he says, frees you from being a prisoner of the impulse [4]. For him the awareness was decisive: "consciousness of this has allowed me to take my life back. And when I take my life back, I understand what the real meaning of my life actually is." [4] He then names that meaning: "The real meaning of my life is to love and be loved." [4]

His formula for lasting happiness puts relationships at the centre: "Faith, family, friends, and work that serves." [4] Success, in his view, may follow as a byproduct [4]. He passes on advice from an investor who had watched thousands of executives: you leave before you are ready or on someone else's terms [4]. Careers end, he concludes, and love does not [4].

Family as a second chance

Brooks treats his children and grandchildren as a second chance after the regret about his parents [4]. After reading the research, he held a family meeting and proposed that they live near and with each other: "You don't visit your grandkids. You live with them." [4] The family moved to the Washington area, and one son's family shares his house [4]. He describes wrestling daily with a small grandson and asking his adult children for advice [4].

Howes asks what his 71-year-old self is telling him. Brooks does not say he should accomplish more. He says "I'm missing opportunities to love more", above all with his wife, whom he calls his guru [4]. In practice that means another day a week at home and being fully present there [4]. He cites C. S. Lewis for the idea behind it: "You can't love in the future. You can only love now." [4]

His final three truths end on the same note: "happiness is love your destiny is to love and be loved it's the only that matters" [4].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

The shared ground

Three of the sources name work crowding out people as a regret. Waldinger's participants regretted too much time at work and too little with people they cared about [3]. Arthur's clients regret spending more of their time at the office [2]. Brooks's worst moments were the 14th hour at the office instead of the first hour with his kids [4]. Robbins endorses Waldinger's version and says it changed how she prioritises her adult kids, her parents and her friends [3].

Achievements are not what people take pride in at the end. Waldinger says this outright, even of people who had won huge prizes [3]. Brooks reaches the same judgement about his own life. The admiration he chased was an idol, and he names the real meaning of his life as to love and be loved [4]. Arthur's legacy story concerns a man who did not hold a big position in society and was remembered for how he was with one woman [2].

The time to act is before the end. Arthur says her three questions should be available to us right now [2]. Brooks quotes Lewis that you can only love now [4]. Waldinger changed his own habits once he read his own study [1].

The routes differ. Waldinger draws on decades of longitudinal research [1][3]. Arthur draws on experience at the bedside [2]. Robbins reports what her audience replayed [3]. Brooks offers a confessional self-diagnosis [4].

Where they part ways: people, or being yourself?

The sources do not say regret is about people and nothing else. A second strand runs through them, and some speakers put it first.

• Arthur opens her answer with authenticity: wishing to have lived a life for oneself, not for parents, society, a partner or children [2]. Her own story is of wearing somebody else's skin [2].
• Bush, in Robbins's compilation, names performing the whole time as the number one regret he hears [3].
• Waldinger's second category, worrying about what other people thought, belongs to the same family, and it came more from women than from men [3].

So these sources hold two strands. One is regret about neglected people. The other is regret about a life lived for other people's approval or expectations. They differ on which leads:

• Waldinger calls the work-and-people regret almost the number one regret [3].
• Arthur says people regret how they did not show up for the people they loved probably more, far more [2].
• Bush puts performing first [3].

There is real tension in Arthur's list. When she says people wish they had lived for themselves rather than for their partner or their kids, she suggests that serving the expectations of the people closest to you can itself be the regret [2].

Two of the accounts link the strands. Brooks's idol of honor is a hunger for the admiration of strangers, and it pulled him away from his children [4]. Waldinger's fix for worrying about others' opinions is to turn attention to whether you are treating people well [3]. In both, seeking approval competes with showing up for the people in your life. The compilation's summary keeps both strands, naming relationships and authenticity over achievements and approval [3].

Arthur's caveat on forgiveness

Arthur's emphasis on asking forgiveness is not a demand that everyone reconcile. She tells of a woman in her late 80s who refused to die until her estranged children came [2]. They had made their peace and did not come. Arthur helped her write letters, some asking forgiveness and some defiant [2].

Her conclusion: "Sometimes we don't have to forgive just because somebody is dying." [2] Robbins adds the card she sent a friend whose estranged father had just died: "Never forget, you cut ties with your father, not because you didn't love him, but because you loved yourself enough to know you deserve to be treated better." [2] Putting relationships first, in this account, does not mean every relationship at any cost.

Different kinds of authority

The speakers' claims rest on different footing:

• Waldinger presents his health finding as one that other studies of different groups confirmed [1].
• The source describes Brooks's brain-hemisphere framing and some of his biology as his own interpretation [4].
• Arthur and Bush speak from their work with the dying and do not give systematic counts [2][3].

Why It Works

The sources give several mechanisms. Some explain why relationships matter so much, and others explain why people neglect them anyway.

Relationships regulate stress, and the body shows it

Waldinger's best-supported explanation for the health finding is stress. When something stressful happens, the body revs up in a fight-or-flight response, and talking to someone helps it calm back down, which is what the body is designed to do [1]. Without good relationships, he suggests, people stay in a low-level fight-or-flight state, with more circulating stress hormones and white blood cells primed for danger [1]. Over time that gradually breaks down multiple systems in the body [1].

In the study, people who saw more people in a given week and felt happier with their relationships lived years longer [1]. They developed the diseases of aging later, if at all, and were less likely to develop coronary artery disease or type 2 diabetes [1]. On this account, neglected relationships cost more than happiness. They also show up in how long and how healthily people live.

Achievement can be counted and looks finishable

Waldinger also explains why achievement wins the daily contest even though it is not what people are proudest of at the end. Badges of achievement can be counted, and they look like a place where we can finally be done [1]. Life offers no such place [1].

Brooks makes a related point about marriage: "Your marriage is not a left brain complicated problem." [4] It cannot be solved, only lived in, and couples who expect a solution conclude something is broken [4]. He argues that "The whole culture of technology and hustle and grind and online presence is all about staying in the left hemisphere of the brain." [4] On his account, that keeps people on the task-solving side, where they never ask the questions about meaning [4]. The source labels this framing as his interpretation [4].

Status-seeking is an old drive with a new target

Brooks's evolutionary account explains why the extra hours feel compelling. Rising in the hierarchy once brought food and mates, and the drive now attaches to followers and status [4]. His salt-water image explains why it never satisfies, because each gain leaves you thirstier [4].

The woman who chose special over happy already knew the remedy for what was wrong in her life [4]. On Brooks's account, the pull is not ignorance. He says self-knowledge is what lets people break it [4].

People avoid the view that would correct them

Arthur explains why the reckoning usually comes only when it is over [2]. Death brings up our greatest fears and a sense of smallness [2]. People are conditioned to pursue good feelings and guard against pain [2]. Some fear that naming death invites it [2].

Robbins quotes her rebuttal: "talking about sex won't make you pregnant and talking about death won't make you dead" [2]. Not talking about death, Arthur says, only leaves people ill-prepared [2]. Picturing the deathbed deliberately lets her see who she has become while she can still change it [2].

Emotional weight makes memory stick

Suzuki's story suggests one reason saying the words matters. She says emotional resonance makes hippocampal dependent memory stick, and her father, deep in dementia, remembered a week later the agreement to say I love you [3].

Relationships are kept up in small, regular acts

Waldinger calls it social fitness: small daily actions that keep relationships strong, as physical exercise does for the body [1]. Brooks's case for phone-free meals rests on a related claim. He says, "If you see your phone on the table, it cuts off the neuropeptide that is occurring to bond you to others called oxytocin." [4]

The regrets Arthur hears most in the relationship strand are omissions: not showing up, and not saying love, thanks or sorry [2]. Waldinger and Brooks describe the remedies in small units: a weekly call, a text, a phone-free meal [1][4].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

It applies to people whose work is going well

Several of the voices come from people who achieved a lot. They include the prize winners in Waldinger's study [3] and Brooks the self-described success addict [4]. Waldinger himself is a Harvard professor who saw he could work all the time and have no friends [1].

It applies at work, not only at home

Putting people first does not mean disdain for work. Participants were proud of being good mentors and good bosses [3]. Waldinger urges keeping connection as a north star at work too [1], and Brooks's formula includes work that serves [4]. The regret is about work that crowds people out, not about work itself.

It does not mean ignoring money

Waldinger says having basic needs met is vital and that people are significantly less happy until it happens [1]. Robbins recalls years of debt and liens on her house, and she frames money as a tool to relieve stress, not the point of life [1]. The finding concerns what comes after basic needs are met.

It does not require a partner or a large circle

Waldinger says the benefits of close relationships "don't require a marriage license", and intimacy can come from close friends and family [1]. For introverts he says there is no better or worse place on the spectrum. They can invest in the one or two people who make them feel good [1]. Pets help too, especially dogs, which are emotionally attuned to their owners [1].

It does not mean reconciling with everyone

Arthur's client whose children stayed away marks a limit, and so does Robbins's card to a friend who had cut ties with an estranged father [2]. Brooks likewise offers his marriage habits only for a relationship that has cooled, not one with abuse or infidelity [4].

It does not mean rescuing people

Waldinger warns against shielding loved ones from the consequences of their choices, as often comes up with addiction. In his words, "we let people when we can face the real world consequences of the choices they make and hopefully learn from them" [1].

Limits of the evidence

The Harvard study began with two groups of young men in Boston, and spouses and children were added later [1]. Waldinger notes that the second regret came more from women than from men [3]. Arthur's and Bush's accounts come from their work with the dying, not from counts [2][3]. Brooks's neuroscience is presented as his interpretation [4]. The sources also differ, as shown above, on which regret comes first.

Where these steps touch health or law, such as end-of-life plans, life-support decisions, social anxiety or depression, get advice from the right professional: a doctor or hospice team, an attorney, or a therapist.

What To Do With It

1. Run your own mini Harvard study. Waldinger suggests finding a photo of yourself at about half your current age [1]. Ask what life looked like then, what mattered, and what has changed [1]. Robbins did it live and saw how focused she had been on money and her next career move [1].

2. Set up one recurring date that happens by default. Waldinger and his co-author Marc Schulz have spoken by phone every Friday at noon for more than 30 years. Because one of them has to cancel for it not to happen, it happens by default [1]. Start with one commitment, such as a monthly dinner with a friend or sibling [1]. Robbins's version is texting a friend or family member every morning [1].

3. Do Arthur's yearly review, hard questions included. Around your birthday, check the practical plan: decision-maker, life support, your body, services, possessions, dependents [2]. Then ask who did I love, how did I love and was I loved, who you need to say I love you to, and who you need to forgive [2]. Draw your lifeline and mark where you stand on it [2].

4. Say love, thanks or sorry to one person this week. These are the unsaid words Arthur names in the regret she hears far more [2]. Suzuki's story shows that one person can change a family's habit of not saying them [3].

5. When work runs late, picture who will remember. Recall Waldinger's saying: "20 years from now, the only people who will remember whether you worked late are your children" [1]. Brooks frames the same choice as the 14th hour at the office against the first hour with your kids [4].

6. Find your idol. Brooks's exercise is to take money, power, pleasure and honor and drop the ones you care about least until one is left [4]. If it is honor, watch for moments when you trade time with the people close to you for the admiration of strangers [4].

7. Protect the hours when people are in the room. Brooks's tech-free times are the first hour of the morning, mealtimes and the last hour at night, and the bedroom is a tech-free zone [4]. Waldinger's family used an interrupting game with M&Ms at dinner to teach listening and turn-taking [1].

8. Give time back in a unit you can measure. Brooks's correction is another day a week at home, fully present [4]. Waldinger's was texting friends and making the dinner dates himself [1]. Pick one concrete shift instead of a general intention.

9. Move closer if you can. Brooks's family meeting led to three generations living near and with each other [4]. Short of that, Robbins's response to Waldinger's findings was to put more effort into seeing her adult kids, her parents and her friends [3].

10. When unsure, check how you are treating people. Waldinger's antidote to worrying about others' opinions is the question of whether you are treating people well [3]. His default for uncertain moments is to ask "what would be the kinder thing to do and do that" [1].

Sources

1. What Makes a Good Life? Dr. Robert Waldinger on the 86-Year Harvard Study of Happiness · The Mel Robbins Podcast
2. Don't Learn This Too Late: Make An Authentic Life Now By Getting Real About The End · The Mel Robbins Podcast
3. 8 Habits That Will Change Your Life: The Expert Advice You Need This Year · The Mel Robbins Podcast
4. Arthur Brooks on Finding Meaning: Screens, the Four Idols and Choosing Happy over Special · The School of Greatness