Coaching practices for The Regret of the Dying Before Bed
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For The Regret of the Dying Before Bed, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I keep telling myself family comes first, but when I actually look at where my hours went this week it’s almost all work
- The second my head hits the pillow my mind starts up
- The moment the lights go out my brain starts running tomorrow’s to-do list on a loop
- I keep putting off the things I say matter most as if I have unlimited time, and I’m losing days to small grievances and "somedays"
- I’m sitting on a real chance to do something that matters to me, and the safe, comfortable, convenient choice is quietly winning by default
Practices that may help
- The Regret of the Dying
Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, documented the most common regrets of dying patients in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. The themes — especially living others’ expectations, working too hard, suppressing feelings, and neglecting friendships — are consistent with broader research on regret and well-being. The evidence is qualitative and self-reported; treat it as wisdom data, not clinical data. - Audit work hours against your stated priorities
Compare how you actually spend your time this week against what you say matters most.
The Regret of the Dying - Schedule a worry time earlier in the day
Contain bedtime worry by giving anxious thoughts a specific earlier window, then postponing them at night.
CBT for Insomnia (CBT-I), Made Practical - Offload cognitive load with a bedtime worry journal
Write tomorrow’s to-do list and any intrusive worries before bed — externalized thoughts stop competing for attention at sleep onset.
The Wind-Down Routine: Engineering Your Path to Sleep - Memento mori as the ultimate premeditation
Premeditate the final loss — your own death — as a clarifier of what actually matters now.
Premeditatio Malorum, in Depth - Apply the deathbed test to current decisions
When facing a trade-off, ask which option the future you will wish you had chosen.
The Bucket List Method - The Pre-Sleep Worry Buffer
Use a 10-minute afternoon or early evening worry review to protect sleep from nighttime rumination.
Worry Time: Containing Anxiety With Scheduled Worry - The Pythagorean evening examination (Hadot’s version)
Before sleep, review the day in three questions: Where did I go wrong? What did I succeed at? What remains undone?
Pierre Hadot’s Spiritual Exercises - Use mortality salience to clarify what actually matters
Regularly reflect on finitude — not to produce dread, but to sharpen the signal-to-noise ratio of your choices.
The Regret of the Dying - Review the day each night
Before sleep, put the day on trial: what did I do well, what badly, what will I do differently?
Seneca on Time, Made Practical
Related concerns
- The Regret Of The Dying Under Stress
Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, documented the most common regrets of dying patients in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. The themes — especially living others’ expectations, working too hard, suppressing feelings, and neglecting friendships — are consistent with broader research on regret and well-being. The evidence is qualitative and self-reported; treat it as wisdom data, not clinical data.
- Deathbed Regret
When facing a trade-off, ask which option the future you will wish you had chosen.
Apply the deathbed test to current decisions
- Deathbed Regret Wisdom
Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, documented the most common regrets of dying patients in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. The themes — especially living others’ expectations, working too hard, suppressing feelings, and neglecting friendships — are consistent with broader research on regret and well-being. The evidence is qualitative and self-reported; treat it as wisdom data, not clinical data.
- End Of Life Regrets
Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, documented the most common regrets of dying patients in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. The themes — especially living others’ expectations, working too hard, suppressing feelings, and neglecting friendships — are consistent with broader research on regret and well-being. The evidence is qualitative and self-reported; treat it as wisdom data, not clinical data.
- Experiences Before You Die
Briefly contemplate your finite lifespan to surface what actually matters to you.
Deliberate mortality reflection
- Mental Accounting Before Bed
Mental accounting is Richard Thaler’s term for the way we treat money differently depending on where it came from or what mental "bucket" it sits in — even though a dollar is a dollar. It is a well-studied behavioral-economics phenomenon: the same money feels spendable or untouchable based on its label, leading to choices that don’t add up. The skill is learning to see the buckets and decide as if money were what it actually is — fungible.
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