Those five wishes of the dying are heartbreaking: 

http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html

Here they are:

1. I wish I had been myself.

2. I wish I had worked less.

3. I wish I had the courage to show my feelings.

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

5. I wish I had let myself be happy.

"Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

More: http://pandawhale.com/post/1129/the-top-of-my-todo-list-and-regrets-of-the-dying

Great thoughts! Start doing what makes YOU want to do! And you will be happy.

Heidi, that's right.

I think the key to life is to live so we will not have any of those regrets when we are dying.

4 out of 5 ain't bad.  You have three guesses as to which of the 5 I'm not doing, and the first two don't count.

You don't want to work less!

Via @emmaseppala :

In a session entitled What is Literally Worth Dying For, Premal Shah, President of Kiva.org, captured a fitting culmination of the week: “If everything you do, you do for yourself, then when you die it all disappears. If everything you do, you do for others, it all lives on.”

What is the greater vanity: doing what's right for yourself or doing what's right for others so memories of yourself will live on after you perish?

Rob, are those not essentially the same thing?

I don't know.  

It was a naive question and one that I'm unsure of the correct answer, especially without having yet earned the privileges of great cynicism or graceful wisdom...

Now I wonder if great cynicism and graceful wisdom are equally difficult to achieve.

Maybe not equally difficult, but certainly both are grandly difficult.

I'm very curious if one might achieve both and, like Whitman's "Song of Myself", 

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Yes! I think, therefore I am... A thinker!

10 Rules for Being Human:

http://pandawhale.com/post/23708/10-rules-for-being-a-human-being-by-cherie-carter-scott

I am not sure #2 is accurate as a regret of the dying, at least not in its present form. If someone worked hard at something they were passionate about and/or changed the world, I would think they'd be incredibly satisfied, not regretful that they worked so hard (cf. Steve Jobs, Elizabeth Holmes). Perhaps it's actually more like wishing they hadn't worked so much so they could spend more time with friends (#4) and do things they enjoyed (#5). Then again, if your work makes you happy, then you've got a nice set up. Unfortunately, the truth is that most people don't enjoy going to work.

I think you're right -- in the tradeoff of time between work, loved ones, and doing things, they regretted not getting the balance right so that one or more of those priorities was underweighted.