Agressief carrière najagen vs werk-privébalans prioriteren
Als je handelt
Fanatiek carrière maken
59%
Als je niets doet
Werk-privébalans voorop stellen
44%
Percentage dat later spijt heeft van elke keuze. De balken en het volledige overzicht staan hieronder.
Carrière
Laatst beoordeeld 2026-04-26
Kwaliteit van bewijs 4.13/5
Beoordelingsscore op acht dimensies volgens de
kwaliteitsrubriek
. Elke dimensie krijgt een score van 1 tot 5.
D1 Bronverificatie
4/5
D2 Autoriteit en onafhankelijkheid van bronnen
4/5
D3 Nauwkeurigheid van spijtcijfer
3/5
D4 Vergelijkbaarheid van bronnen
3/5
D5 Gilovich-patroon
5/5
D6 Prozakwaliteit
5/5
D7 Volledigheid van voorbehouden
5/5
D8 Steekproefkwaliteit
4/5
Gemiddelde4.13/5
Proxygegevens — er bestaat geen directe spijtenquête voor deze beslissing. De percentages zijn afgeleid van tevredenheidsscores en toegangsdrempelgegevens in plaats van vragen die direct naar spijt vroegen. Zie opmerkingen hieronder.
Spijt van handelen
Fanatiek carrière maken
59%
59% betreurt dat ze geen prioriteit gaven aan werk-privébalans
Werknemers in VS, VK, Frankrijk, Duitsland
retrospectief, geen vast tijdsbestek
Spijt van nalaten
Werk-privébalans voorop stellen
44%
~33% betreurt dat ze niet meer carrièrerisico's namen (proxy)
Werknemers in VS, VK, Frankrijk, Duitsland
retrospectief, geen vast tijdsbestek
% betreurt deze keuze
Fanatiek carrière makenWerk-privébalans voorop stellen
59%44%
action dominates — Handelen domineert — de meesten hebben spijt dat ze handelden.
Gerelateerde keuzes
Semantisch vergelijkbare keuzes — zelfde terrein, andere afwegingen.
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, 44% — “more than 4 in 10” — regret
not trying to make a full career change, the closest career-underinvestment
figure the same survey reports. The resulting roughly 1.3:1 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 67% report experiencing at
least one burnout-related outcome, such as low energy or lack of
motivation, in the past month. 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. These converging datasets, from different methodologies and
timeframes, all point the same direction.
The main caveat is measurement asymmetry. The 59% and 44% 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 44% inaction figure (“not making a full career change”)
is a proxy for career-underinvestment regret, not a direct measure of
regretting a balance-first choice. 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 1.3:1 ratio is an artifact of
combining non-identical survey items and should be treated as indicative,
not calibrated.
Bronnen: handelen
Bronnenverantwoording
Elk getal hieronder is wat elke bron rapporteerde, met het letterlijke citaat waarop we ons baseerden en hoe we tot ons cijfer kwamen. Klik op een link om rechtstreeks te verifiëren.
2/3 bronnen onafhankelijk woordelijk geverifieerd tegenover de geciteerde bron
[1]Resume Now — The Road Not Taken: Greatest Career Regrets Revealed
Geverifieerd
↗ 7 other entries
Primaire studie
59% of workers regret not prioritizing work-life balance in their career
Fragment
“"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."
”
Brongegevens van
2024-01-10
Geraadpleegd
2026-04-26
Verificatie
Fragment onafhankelijk opnieuw opgehaald en woord voor woord bevestigd tegenover de geciteerde bron tijdens onze onderbouwingsaudit.
Berekening
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
Primaire studie
77% of workers have experienced burnout at their current job; 91% say unmanageable stress negatively impacts work quality
Fragment
“"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."
”
Brongegevens van
2024-01-15
Geraadpleegd
2026-04-26
Berekening
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.
[3]American Psychological Association (APA) / The Harris Poll — 2024 Work in America Survey: Psychological Safety in the Changing Workplace
Geverifieerd
Primaire studie
45% of employed US adults say they have to work more hours per week than they want to; 67% report experiencing at least one outcome often associated with workplace burnout in the past month
Fragment
“"More than two in five (45%) employed adults said they have to work more hours per week than they want to. … A majority (67%) of workers reported experiencing, in the last month, at least one outcome often associated with workplace burnout, such as lack of interest, motivation, or low energy, feeling lonely or isolated, and a lack of effort at work."
”
Brongegevens van
2024-06-14
Geraadpleegd
2026-07-03
Verificatie
Fragment onafhankelijk opnieuw opgehaald en woord voor woord bevestigd tegenover de geciteerde bron tijdens onze onderbouwingsaudit.
Berekening
APA's Work in America Survey, conducted online by The Harris Poll on behalf of APA among 2,027 employed US adults, fielded March 25 - April 3, 2024, released June 14, 2024. Provides further corroborating quantitative support for the career-overinvestment regret mechanism alongside the Deloitte burnout figures: nearly half of workers are already working more than they want to, and two-thirds report at least one burnout symptom in the past month.
Bronnen: niet handelen
Bronnenverantwoording
Elk getal hieronder is wat elke bron rapporteerde, met het letterlijke citaat waarop we ons baseerden en hoe we tot ons cijfer kwamen. Klik op een link om rechtstreeks te verifiëren.
[1]Resume Now — The Road Not Taken: Greatest Career Regrets Revealed↗ 7 other entries
Primaire studie
44% regret not making a full career change (more than 4 in 10)
Fragment
“"Not making a full career change – 44% … More than 4 in 10 regret not trying to make a career change."
”
Brongegevens van
2024-01-10
Geraadpleegd
2026-07-10
Berekening
Same Resume Now survey (n=1,000). The cited page lists "Not making a full career change – 44%" and narrates it as "More than 4 in 10 regret not trying to make a career change." Used here as a proxy for inaction-side (career-underinvestment) regret: respondents who prioritized stability or balance and later regretted not making a bolder career move. Note this is a distinct multi-select item from the action-side "work-life balance" question, not a forced-choice counterpart (see caveats). The page's own "one-third (34%)" figure refers to those with NO career regrets, so it is not usable as an inaction-regret rate; the prior "over one-third wished they had taken more risks" and "nearly 98 percent" excerpts did not appear on the cited page and were removed.
[2]Harvard Gazette — Over nearly 80 years, Harvard study has been showing how to live a healthy and happy life
Gerenommeerde referentie
Relationship quality at age 50 predicted health at 80 better than cholesterol levels
Fragment
“"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."
”
Brongegevens van
2017-04-11
Geraadpleegd
2026-04-26
Berekening
Harvard Study of Adult Development (Grant Study), an 87-year longitudinal study of 268 Harvard men begun in 1938, now directed by Robert Waldinger. Qualitative context only — this source does not ground either regret rate. The finding that relationships outperform career success as a predictor of late-life satisfaction and health lends directional support to the interpretation that those who chose balance and invested in relationships report higher life satisfaction in old age.
Kanttekeningen
De actie- en inactiepercentages komen uit dezelfde Resume Now-enquête, maar uit verschillende multi-select-vragen — "geen prioriteit geven aan werk-privébalans" (59%) versus "niet meer carrièrerisico's nemen" (~33%). Dit is geen schone binaire: een enkele respondent kon beide spijt simultaan onderschrijven, en velen deden dat waarschijnlijk. De enquête bood geen geforceerde keuze tussen carrière-streven en balans. Het 59%-actie-spijt-cijfer omvat waarschijnlijk mensen op alle carrière-intensiteitsniveaus, niet alleen degenen die agressief naar vooruitgang streefden. Het ~33%-cijfer wordt gerapporteerd als "meer dan een derde" — het exacte percentage is niet gepubliceerd. Deloitte's burnout-gegevens kwantificeren het mechanisme (77% burnout-prevalentie, 83% rapporteert beschadigde relaties), maar meten werkstress-uitkomsten in plaats van retrospectieve spijt zelf. De Harvard Grant Study volgde een elite, geheel mannelijke cohort die in 1938 begon — het generaliseert niet schoon naar hedendaagse gemengde geslachts- en klasse-populaties. De actie-dominantie-bevinding hier is ongebruikelijk in Gilovich's raamwerk, waar inactie typisch op lange termijn domineert; echter, de "ik werkte te hard"-spijt kan het zeldzame domein vertegenwoordigen waar actie-spijt voortduurt tot op hoge leeftijd omdat de opportuniteitskosten (gemiste relaties, gemiste mijlpalen in de kindertijd) onomkeerbaar zijn.
