Some of the things they say are surprising. Some are obvious. But whatever they are, you should take note.

The top five regrets are as follows:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

You can read more on Bronnie’s blog here.

Give it some thought. Are you working too much? Are you living the life others expect of you, not the life that you truly want? Are you keeping in touch with your friends?

Think about how you can change your life to avoid ending up saying the same things. No matter where you’re at, you can still change your life and where you’re going.

In this video for TDTYTIS he talks about the importance of being willing to fail so that you can learn. This is such an important lesson. If we aren’t willing to fail, we’ll never take risks, and as a result never learn or reap large rewards from what we do.

What was your answer to them?

In most people’s case, their response will have been “Yes, but…”. In order words, they’re saying no, with a nice face on it. They’re rejecting an idea or suggestion because perhaps it puts them outside their comfort zone, or they don’t understand the idea.

Avish Parashar is launching a new book soon, titled Say “Yes, And”. He tries to challenge the common “Yes, but…” answer, citing it as a key reason for people not achieving their goals and not making progress in different aspects of life.

Why do we say “Yes, but…” so often? Because it’s easier than saying “Yes, And”. It’s a way out of something that we don’t understand, or something that challenges us. It’s a polite way of turning down something we’d rather not do. We all say it more often than we realize – indeed, it’s become part of our everyday language. It’s one of those things we say instinctively, without thinking about it.

In Avish’s book, he talks about the dangers of saying “Yes, but…”. He says that if we don’t accept new challenges and opportunities put to us, we won’t make any progress in life.

He says it’s a vicious cycle. If you have a great idea, and suggest it to someone more experienced than you, and they say “Yes, but…”, then you’ll feel disappointed and perhaps give up on the idea. Even if you don’t give up immediately, you likely will if you’ve been told “Yes, but…” by a few more people. Later, if someone comes to you for advice, you’ll be more likely to say “Yes, but…” to them. The cycle continues, and this to me was one of the scariest parts of Avish’s book.

The best part of saying “Yes, And” instead of “Yes, but…”? It creates luck. If you say “Yes, And” to an opportunity you’re given, you’re more likely to be given further opportunities. The result is that you feel more lucky, but it’s actually luck that you’ve created yourself. And you can keep creating that luck throughout your whole life.

Say “Yes, And” is a short book, and it gives a clear guide to the many benefits of saying “Yes, And” in your life It’s the type of book you should read, and try the advice it gives for a week, and see whether it helps you in your life or not.

Personally, I learned the benefits of saying “Yes, And” a few years ago when I started my personal blog. I’d been putting it off for a while, making up excuses –  ”Yes, I could make a blog, but no one would read it”, and “Yes, but I don’t know how to design my blog”. Eventually I quit with the excuses and used a free template to start it. That was one of the best decisions of my life.

But I also believe that there is a limit to the amount we should say “Yes, And”, and I would’ve liked to have read more about this in Avish’s book. I know some people who say “Yes, And” to every single opportunity they’re given. Even if they don’t have enough time to do something, they’ll find a way to make it happen in a desperate desire to say “Yes, And” to everything. But my experience with these people is that they’re devoted to nothing and in many cases lack integrity. They throw themselves at every opportunity, even if it goes against their beliefs and desires, and they end up with no time to do anything they love.

Therefore, I recommend saying “Yes, And” to opportunities you’re given and ideas you’re told about, so long as they provide you with a clear benefit and are in line with your existing aims in life. That way, you won’t spread yourself too thin, and will be able to remain devoted to a cause and with enough time to make a difference in it.

Give it a go. Try saying “Yes, And” to thing you’ve previously hesitated in doing for a week. If it makes your week better, keep saying it. If it causes you to become stressed because you’ve taken too much on, don’t say it.

This is one of the things TDTYTIS believes in. We believe you should listen to a huge amount of advice, see how it relates to your life, and then decide whether it’s advice you should follow or not. Saying “Yes, And” is no exception. Try it, but don’t follow it blindly.

Avish, the author of Say “Yes, And” has reached out to us, and has been kind enough to offer us a few physical copies of his book to give away to our readers. We’d like to hear about whether you think saying “Yes, And” is a good or a bad idea, and why. Leave a comment with your thoughts and experiences, or send a tweet to TDTYTIS, and you’ll be in to win. We’ll select a few people who have explained their views well, and Avish will send you a copy of his book.

So, start here and say “Yes, And”, and try win yourself a copy of the book. If you miss out, not to worry – Avish is giving away free PDF copies of the book for one week before its launch. See here for more information.

Dennis sold his first company, Dodgeball, to Google in 2005. He’s also been named one of Fortune Magazine’s “40 under 40″ rising stars.

I met Dennis at the LeWeb conference in Paris, and asked him to do a quick video to share the thing he wishes he’d learned when he was younger. Watch the video to see it all, but in short: he wishes he’d learned that you can start your own thing, rather than joining a company.

They teach you about the importance of studying, but they really don’t teach you much at all about the process of studying. Sure, they might tell you that you need to eat healthy and take regular breaks. But do they teach you how to get past procrastination and actually get study done? Doubtful. But you’re about to learn how.

Some of you may think that you have good willpower, and will be able to use your computer while studying but avoid visiting Facebook, Twitter, or any other distracting websites. If any of you can honestly do that, I congratulate you, and you need not read further. But for the majority of us, it’s all too tempting to click on these websites “just for a second”. Nek minnit… Half an hour has passed and you remember you’re meant to be studying.

A single application will solve that problem for you.

It’s quite aptly named – called Concentrate. You can download it and use it for free for 60hours, but after that you’ll have to pay (it costs $29 – very cheap for how much it’ll help you).

Here’s how it works. Concentrate lets you create a “Task”, and then create “Rules” for that task. So, for example, I created the task “Study”. Then for that task, I created rules like “Block all social network websites”, and “Block applications: Twitter, Mail”. When you then activate the task, all those rules will be applied to your computer until you end the task. So, for the duration that you have the task activated, you won’t be able to visit any social networking websites or open the Twitter or Mail applications (using the above example).

You can create an endless number of rules, from opening and closing applications and websites, to changing desktop backgrounds and setting personal reminders and playing songs.

With Concentrate, that quick click on Facebook becomes impossible. And you really are forced to concentrate. After a while using Concentrate, you might find that your brain has been trained to not even click on Facebook at all – and maybe you truly will be able to study for an hour without being distracted. But, Concentrate is the first step in getting to that point.

Do check it out. I guarantee that it’ll help you study ten times more effectively. And in fact, you should even recommend it to your teachers – they might find it useful in concentrating while they prepare classes. Because no one is immune to distractions these days.

Peter Sims, the author, uses examples such as Frank Gehry, the architect of buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, and the comedian Chris Rock, to demonstrate this new way of achieving goals. Since reading the book, I’ve been thinking differently about a lot of things I do in my life, using the little bets approach. It’s easiest to explain little bets in terms of a business, but in fact little bets can be made in all parts of our lives.

Traditionally, businesses innovated through coming up with a master plan. Their employees will be told to “innovate”, so they’ll sit down, come up with ideas, then write a huge document outlining everything to do with that idea. Then that document will be sent off to the developers or manufacturers who make it to the letter. And then the product is either a huge hit or a massive flop. In many ways, this form of innovation comes down to luck as to whether it is successful or not.

The little bets approach, in contrast, involves looking for a problem and then trying to build something to solve that problem in a very simple form. So for example, if a website is to be created, then that website will be created in the most simple way it possibly can be – without great graphics and lots of features. But then, the business can start to get users of their product or website. And in turn, those early users will tell the business what they like about the product and what they don’t like about it. Then the business gets their manufacturers or developers to use the customer’s feedback to change the product.

The end result, some of you may have picked up, reflects what the users want. And all it’s involved is taking a little bet at the start. The basic website would have cost a fraction of the cost of a website developed using a “master plan”, and the little bet website will also have a much larger chance of eventual success.

Sims uses people like the comedian Chris Rock to show how little bets can be applied to our everyday lives. Rock would go to local restaurants or bars and perform a huge number of jokes to audiences. And he fully expected that most of the jokes would be absolutely terrible. But by taking lots of little bets by performing jokes to audiences, he would eventually be able to work out which jokes people liked and which they didn’t. So instead of just sitting down and thinking up some jokes, then hoping that they were funny on the night of a big performance, Rock would perform in front of small crowds and make little bets on lots of jokes in order to work out the best ones.

If little bets can even be applied to comedy – then how can they be applied to your life in order to help you achieve better?

Fabrice wrote a post on his blog back in 2008 titled “Graduating from College: Starting your own business or joining an established company?”. It’s probably a more relevant topic now than it ever has been, and I thought I’d summarise Fabrice’s key points here. If you’re interested, then head over to his blog to read the whole article and the many other fascinating posts he’s written.

When Fabrice was graduating from Princeton, it was the time when the Internet bubble was really starting to inflate (can be seen by the Netscape IPO). Fabrice says while he wanted to go and start a company and ride the tech bubble up, he lacked two things: a good idea, and business experience.

He had been really impressed by McKinsey and how Fortune had described them as “the smartest people in the world”. So, believing that he might miss out forever on the tech boom, Fabrice went and joined McKinsey.

That is such a hard choice to make. Many of you are likely making similar decisions right now, or will have to make one soon in your life. You know that you have a huge chance of getting lucky and making some money in an industry boom, but at the same time you know it won’t greatly help your long-term career and things could always go wrong. It’s a tough decision.

But Fabrice didn’t miss the Internet boom. He left McKinsey in 2008 and went to a private tech company. As he says, “McKinsey had essentially been business school for me, except they had paid me”.

The advice Fabrice gives at the end of his post is invaluable.

“I want to reemphasize that there are no fundamentally wrong paths out of college. You can create your company. Fail or succeed, you will learn a lot.

The one notion I want to dispel is that opportunities are disappearing and that as a result you have to go after whichever opportunity is available now. I truly believed that when I went to McKinsey I might miss out on the Internet bubble. I also believed that after Aucland, it was going to be hard to find new ideas because everything had been done. I was wrong. Some ideas are time sensitive and if you don’t go after them someone else will, but the reality is that new opportunities keep appearing all the time, especially in dynamic and competitive industries like the Internet.”.

Great advice, Fabrice. Thank you for letting me summarise!

Throughout reading Seth Godin’s book The Dip, I was a shocked, as his thesis goes against the values we are brought up with. We are taught that quitting is something we must not do, ever. It’s like giving in. Our entire education systems are based around this concept of not quitting – we have to go through the process from years 1 to 13, then university, slogging away at work without quitting.

Seth Godin says that quitting is a good thing, and no one will ever become the best at anything unless they are good at quitting.

The book starts with Godin describing why you have to be the best. It’s entirely relevant to the book, and very interesting. If you look at the rewards given to the winner in an industry, the rewards are usually even ten times greater than those received by the the company who comes second in any industry. The example used in the book is that of ice cream flavours. Of all the flavours, vanilla is by far the most popular, even more popular than chocolate. So we might expect that it has marginally higher sales than chocolate ice cream. But in fact, it has many times more sales than chocolate and most other flavours combined. It’s a simple analogy, but it shows why we need to be the best in whatever we do. Just look at Google search results – the first result on Google is clicked on more than ten times more than the second Google search result. That’s why you need to be best.

Godin then argues that you will never be the best in anything unless you learn to quit intelligently. He says that if we don’t quit then we’ll simply spend our time working on projects or in jobs that are in fact either a cul-de-sac or a cliff. These are terms he uses to describe jobs or projects that are a complete waste of time, because you’ll either spend your whole life working on them but they’ll never get you anywhere, or you’ll work on them for a while and then fail miserably.

His entire book is about learning when to quit, and when to stick with something.

How does “The Dip” come into it? The Dip is what every person experiences in almost anything that they start. Imagine you’re learning to play golf. At the start it’s new and exciting, and the time spent at the driving range practicing is fun and fulfilling because you have a lot of room to improve. But after a while the practice starts to become not so fun. You don’t see the improvements like you used to. You start to get blisters on your hands because you’ve played too much. It starts to chew into too much of your time. And then you start thinking about whether golf really is for you, and if you’ll ever become good.

It’s the same for anything you’re starting. Whether you’re an entrepreneur starting a new business or someone starting an undergrad degree at college – you’ll experience the dip.

The first thing Godin advises is that if you won’t become the best at whatever you’re starting, there’s no point in trying to get past The Dip and succeed. He says you should quit straight away and focus your time and money on something that you can become the best at. Remember, it makes sense to be the best, not just above average, because the rewards are unequally skewed. In essence, Godin says that you should quit as soon as you realize something’s not worth going on to do. But it’s best to quit before you get to The Dip, because then you haven’t wasted as much time and effort.

The whole book challenged the way I think about a lot of things, because I’ve been taught to view challenges the way our education system deems we should. In some ways it’s dangerous that we think we should never give up, because it means so many people in society will never make a good contribution to society and do what they love because they’re stuck with something they’re too proud to quit. If I could choose one quote from the text to share, it’s this:

“Never Quit”.

What a spectacularly bad piece of advice. I think the advice giver meant to say “Never quit something with great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment”.

Now that’s good advice.

Here Jack shares his view that, as he puts it quite openly, “people are stupid”. He goes on to explain exactly what he means. Watch the video to see his point!