I have found that as a first approximation, regret avoidance is a good life strategy. In other words, when faced with a decision, opting for the choice that you're least likely to regret is a fairly good approach. The reason is that the "now you" is the only one who gets a vote but the "future yous" are the ones who have to live with the choice, so there is a natural tendency for decision-making to favor the now over the future, and by considering what future yous would or wouldn't regret, you can give them an opportunity to vote as well. However, I included the qualifier "as a first approximation" because this approach isn't optimal, for at least two reasons. First, by strictly following it, it's possible to be too future-focused and insufficiently now-focused. For example, if you consistently work hard over a long period toward a goal, it's unlikely that the future yous who benefit from that hard work will regret the hard work, because it wasn't "them" who had to put in the effort and sacrifice, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the goal was worth working toward. Second, regret avoidance can lead to an overabundance of caution. People often have the opportunity to invest (time, money, effort) in opportunities for which success is far from guaranteed but for which the payoff justifies the investment. For such long shots, a regret avoidance approach would dictate not taking the risk, but this would be a mistake. In light of the fact that most people are too risk-averse by default, this approach would push them even further in the wrong direction. The best approach seems to be one that factors in both the destination and the journey, thinks about costs and benefits probabilistically, and gives all future yous a vote based on their individual costs and payoffs.