The million dollars question here is, if they had a chance to go back and do things differently, would that make them have no regrets on their dying bed, or they'd just end up with a different set of regrets?
I guess that there are always going to be regrets.
I've seen my parents and my grandmother dying. Mostly they were weak, anxious, miserable and suffering. Nobody mentioned any thing they regretted. My grandmother kept telling me her life went so fast, that I should enjoy mine and do whatever made me happy. She sounded more nostalgic of her youth than regretting any past actions.
I think we like to make up stories, trying to find some drive, but if you don't believe in afterlife, life is pointless anyway.
"I wish I had not worked so hard."
What if this person went back in time and didn't work so hard? Are you suggesting they would, in their twilight years, express regret for not having worked harder? Perhaps regret they did not have the means to buy more stuff or travel?
Because nothing like that made the top 5 from the author's anecdotal evidence.
We have to assume either then that people rarely regret not working enough (or that the majority of us work too much and so never have the opposite regret, ha ha).
Same with sport, I was pretty good at some point, preparing for a state competition in swimming, but fell in love and dropped out of trainings (and she dumped me some 6 months later). If I worked harder back then perhaps I'd now have a medal on my wall to boost my ego with. There're literally millions of such events in everyones' lives, some small, some big, some more important and some less, and it's just a question if you'll go back to them one day or leave them be...
I had a bit of a "what am I doing with my life" crisis a few years back when I felt addicted to working, and I made the changes to live a calmer, more enjoyable life at the expense of some income. Will I now regret not leaving more money for my daughter/wife when I go?
We're all stumbling through life to the same conclusion. No one gets to do everything they wanted to.