Korva is a scroll of the internet’s best ideas.
Make the deathbed decision
The deathbed test
The test works like this. When a decision comes up, imagine looking back on it at the end of life and asking whether it was valuable and whether something useful was done, for yourself, for your family, or for somebody else. An offer to do something you wouldn't value or esteem is easy to turn down. The aim is to do only the things that will be valuable in time to come.
Chop wood, carry water
Some tasks can't be skipped, which is where chop wood, carry water comes in. Certain jobs are no fun, and the pleasure comes at the end of the day in having chopped a lot of wood and carried a lot of water. Sometimes a chore has to get done so the other things can happen.
Everyday choices
Almost everyone has some room to choose, even if only between book A and book B or between two podcast episodes, and that choice usually gets little thought.
Where does chop wood, carry water come from?
It comes from Zen tradition and is often linked to the layman Pang Yun, a Chinese Buddhist of the eighth and ninth centuries. A verse attributed to him describes his miraculous powers as drawing water and carrying firewood. Zen teachers later turned the phrase into a saying that enlightenment lives in ordinary daily work.
Do people regret what they did or what they skipped?
Thomas Gilovich and Victoria Medvec surveyed regrets in a 1995 paper in Psychological Review. In the short term, people regretted actions more, such as a bad purchase or a poor choice. Over the long term, they regretted inactions more, such as chances not taken.
Why does imagining the distant future change choices?
Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman developed construal level theory, which holds that events far away in time are thought of in abstract terms. Near events are thought of in concrete detail, like the effort and inconvenience of the moment. Abstract thinking brings values and meaning forward, so a choice imagined from far away is judged more on what it stands for.
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