“Live each day like it’s your last.”

We’ve all heard this advice at least once in our lives. This is horrible advice. The idea behind it is not to waste your life on boring, mundane things, but to “live” life to the fullest. This idea does have some value, but the notion that you should live each day like you’re going to die tomorrow is unsustainable.

Let’s entertain this philosophy for a minute: okay, this is the last day on Earth. Well, I’m certainly not going to work or school. I’m not going to do anything healthy for myself or others, and I won’t be making any investments for my future.

If today were the last day on Earth, I would blow through my savings, liquidate all of my assets and investments, and generally ruin life for Future Brian.

The point is this: if you lived even one day like it’s your last, it would take decades to recover from the damage it would do—if that’s even possible. I’m even being conservative and keeping it mild.

If everyone lived each day like it was their last, the earth would be filled with chaos: rape, murder, fights, theft, and all manner of debauchery.

Why bother entertaining advice or idioms that, if implemented, would ruin your life—or all of humanity if followed on a mass scale?

Now, let’s extract the valuable lesson embedded in this idiotic saying and apply it into something actionable and healthy. I’ve contrived an epithet for this philosophy:

Retrospective Regret.

(I am not claiming to have thought up this idea; I’ve probably never had a unique thought in my life, but I am going to put this philosophy into words, followed by actionability).

You’ve probably heard stories of an elderly or terminally ill person lying on their deathbed. They’re asked, “do you have any regrets?” or, “what do you wish you could do more [now that it’s too late]?”

Typically, the answer is something like “I wish I could have spent more time with my family; I wish I could have hugged my son one last time; I wish I had spent less time at the office,” and other regrets that they now have in retrospect.

This is Retrospective Regret. In retrospect, you regret something.