Free 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done by Peter Bregman

most common regret? “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” Their second most common? “I wish I didn’t work so hard.”
    There are two ways to address these regrets. One, work less hard and spend your time living a life true to yourself. Or two, work just as hard—harder even—on things that matter to you. On things that represent a life lived true to you. Something you consider to be important. Meaningful.
    Because if you put those two regrets together, you realize that what people really regret isn’t simply working so hard, it’s working so hard on things that simply don’t matter to them. If our work feels like it matters to us, if it represents
a life true to us
, then we would die without the main regrets that haunt the dying. We would live more fully.
    That doesn’t mean you should sell all your belongings and feed the poor in a foreign country. Well, if that’s true to you, go ahead. But the whole point is that your life needs to be true to
you
, not what others expect of you. Maybe that’s feeding the poor. Maybe it’s cooking dinner for your family.
    So the question is:
What matters to you?
    That’s a critically important question to explore. What matters to you? Of course making enough money, havingenough vacation time, and feeling loved and respected by your family and friends matter. But you know that already. Go deeper.
    First, ask yourself what’s working: What about your daily work, your daily life, matters to you? Why are you doing it? What part of your life is a source of pride? What impact do you feel you’re having on people, ideas, or things that are important to you?
    Next, ask yourself what’s neutral: What are you spending your time on that you don’t particularly care about? What doesn’t matter to you? What’s not important?
    Finally, ask yourself what alienates you: What are you spending your time on—in work or in life—that contradicts what matters to you? What makes you feel bad? Untrue to yourself? What are you, even slightly, embarrassed about?
    And then slowly, over time, shift where you’re spending that time, so the scale begins to tip in the direction of what matters to you. Some things you won’t be able to change immediately: Maybe you’re working in the wrong job, for the wrong company. But don’t be afraid to ask the questions; you will be tremendously more dedicated, productive, and effective if you care. If you’re working on things that matter to you.
    Can everyone spend their time working on things that matter to them? Maybe not. But I remember listening to a nighttime janitor as she spoke with such deep pride about how well she cleaned, how wonderful the office looked after she finished, and how important she felt it was to the people who worked there during the day. So, maybe yes.
    There is no objective measure—certainly not money—that determines the value of a particular kind of work to the person who does it. All that matters is that you do work that matters to you.
    I woke up at six in the morning and looked over at my bedside table where Gawande’s article lay open, the photo of an empty wheelchair with a baby’s HAPPY BIRTHDAY balloon tied to it staring at me. Once again, I felt that dreaded rush of fear and sadness spread from the center of my chest to the rest of my body.
    So I took a deep breath, got out of bed, took a shower, and sat down to write this chapter. To work on this book. Because writing, to me, matters.
    Focus your year on the things that matter to you. On things that have specific meaning to you.

16
I’m the Parent I Have to Be
Avoiding Tunnel Vision
    W
ait a minute
, I thought as I looked up from the trail we had been hiking for several hours.
Where are we?
    I knew I was lost. Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone. I was leading a thirty-day wilderness expedition for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS). Which, in this case, meant there were eight 16- to