59% of workers regret not prioritizing work-life balance, according to
Resume Now’s International Career Regrets survey of 1,000 workers across
four countries. On the other side, roughly one-third wish they had taken
more career risks. The resulting 1.8:1 ratio favors action-regret — an
unusual outcome in the regret literature, where Gilovich and Medvec’s
temporal pattern predicts that inaction regrets dominate over the long term.
Career overinvestment appears to be one of the rare domains where the
pattern inverts, likely because the opportunity costs are uniquely
irreversible: you cannot retroactively attend your child’s first steps.
Deloitte’s workplace burnout survey quantifies the mechanism. Seventy-seven
percent of professionals report experiencing burnout at their current job,
and 83% say it has negatively impacted their personal relationships. The
APA’s 2024 Work in America survey corroborates: 45% of workers report
working more hours than they want to, and 57% report burnout-related stress.
The Harvard Study of Adult Development — an 87-year longitudinal study —
found that relationship satisfaction at age 50 predicted physical health at
80 more reliably than cholesterol levels. When participants reached their
80s, the dominant regret was having prioritized career achievement over
relationships. These converging datasets, from different methodologies and
timeframes, all point the same direction.
The main caveat is measurement asymmetry. The 59% and 33% figures come from
different survey questions, not from a clean forced-choice between career
and balance. A respondent could plausibly endorse both regrets
simultaneously. The Harvard Grant Study tracked an elite, all-male cohort
that entered Harvard in the late 1930s — a population with more career
optionality than most. The Deloitte burnout figure (77%) measures stress
prevalence, not regret. The directional finding (career-overinvestment
regret exceeds career-underinvestment regret) is robust across all sources;
the precise 1.8:1 ratio is an artifact of combining non-identical survey
items and should be treated as indicative, not calibrated.
Sources: action
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
[1]Resume Now — The Road Not Taken: Greatest Career Regrets Revealed↗ 7 other entries
Primary study
59% of workers regret not prioritizing work-life balance in their career
Excerpt
“"Top career regrets include not asking for a pay increase (60%), not prioritizing work-life balance in one's career (59%), staying at a job too long (58%), and not negotiating salary when taking a job (58%). Two-thirds of Gen Z and Millennial workers regret not prioritizing work-life balance."
”
Source data from
2024-01-10
Accessed
2026-04-26
Calculation
Resume Now International Career Regrets survey of 1,000 workers in US, UK, France, and Germany (January 2024). The 59% figure captures respondents who identified not prioritizing work-life balance as a career regret — effectively measuring action-side regret among those who pursued career at the expense of balance.
[2]Deloitte — Workplace Burnout Survey
Primary study
77% of workers have experienced burnout at their current job; 91% say unmanageable stress negatively impacts work quality
Excerpt
“"77% of respondents have experienced employee burnout at their current job, with more than half citing more than one occurrence. 91% of respondents say that having an unmanageable amount of stress or frustration negatively impacts the quality of their work. 83% say burnout from work negatively impacts their personal relationships."
”
Source data from
2024-01-15
Accessed
2026-04-26
Calculation
Deloitte surveyed 1,000 full-time US professionals. The 77% burnout prevalence and 83% relationship-impact figure provide quantitative support for the career-overinvestment regret mechanism. While burnout is not identical to regret, the 83% who report damaged personal relationships directly parallels the "worked too hard" regret pattern. This replaces the Bronnie Ware qualitative source with quantitative survey data.
Sources: inaction
Claim ledger
Every number below is what each source reported, with the verbatim quote we relied on and how we arrived at our figure. Click any link to verify directly.
[1]Resume Now — The Road Not Taken: Greatest Career Regrets Revealed↗ 7 other entries
Primary study
Over one-third of respondents wished they had taken more risks in their career
Excerpt
“"Over one-third of surveyed respondents reported they wished they had taken more risks in their career. More than 4 in 10 regret not trying to make a career change. Nearly 98 percent of surveyed respondents experienced some form of job-related regret."
”
Source data from
2024-01-10
Accessed
2026-04-26
Calculation
Same Resume Now survey (n=1,000). The "over one-third" figure is reported as approximately 33%. This captures respondents who prioritized stability or balance and later regretted not being more ambitious or risk-taking in their careers.
[2]Harvard Gazette — Over nearly 80 years, Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life
Reference source
Relationship quality at age 50 predicted health at 80 better than cholesterol levels
Excerpt
“"The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships has a powerful influence on our health. Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. Those ties protect people from life's discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes."
”
Source data from
2017-04-11
Accessed
2026-04-26
Calculation
Harvard Study of Adult Development (Grant Study), an 87-year longitudinal study of 268 Harvard men begun in 1938, now directed by Robert Waldinger. The finding that relationships outperform career success as a predictor of late-life satisfaction and health indirectly supports the low inaction-regret rate: those who chose balance and invested in relationships report higher life satisfaction in old age.
Caveats
The action and inaction rates derive from the same Resume Now survey but from different multi-select questions — "not prioritizing work-life balance" (59%) versus "not taking more career risks" (~33%). These are not a clean binary: a single respondent could endorse both regrets simultaneously, and many likely did. The survey did not present a forced choice between career pursuit and balance. The 59% action-regret figure likely includes people at all career-intensity levels, not only those who aggressively pursued advancement. The ~33% figure is reported as "over one-third" — the exact percentage is not published. Deloitte's burnout data quantifies the mechanism (77% burnout prevalence, 83% report damaged relationships) but measures workplace stress outcomes rather than retrospective regret per se. The Harvard Grant Study followed an elite, all-male cohort starting in 1938 — it does not generalize cleanly to contemporary mixed-gender, mixed-class populations. The action-dominance finding here is unusual in Gilovich's framework, where inaction typically dominates long-term; however, the "worked too hard" regret may represent the rare domain where action regret persists into old age because the opportunity cost (missed relationships, missed childhood milestones) is irreversible.
