FOMO – the fear of missing out. Many thanks to Tim Ferriss for the perfect acronym.
I’ve just started a really amazing course and am really wanting to do another great course at the same time. In my heart I know I cannot do them both justice but I’ve been suffering from a FOMO moment – what if I never get the chance again to do the second course? I love that Tim named and crystallised the issue for me!
Choosing is really hard when there are two seemingly equally appealing opportunities, both of which I think will be really beneficial. But if I look really carefully at the FOMO, it’s really a combination of a number of fears, which I can name and then address.
There is a genuine fear of missing the opportunity to learn a new technology that is very exciting – as they may not be accrediting people next year, but I can live with that risk. There’s a fear of paying more – the price is going up quite a lot – but it’s only money, I will just have to work a bit harder to pay it off. There’s a fear of dinting my reputation for ‘keeping my word’ – I’ve said I’d like to do the course, so my friend and the person running the course may now think my word is not reliable – but that means I will need to talk to both of them and explain what’s going on. There’s also a fear of letting my friend down – we were going to buddy up, which would be helpful to both of us – so again I will need to talk with her, but I think she would understand.
Now on the flip side there must be a good acronym for the consequences of saying yes COSY or the consequences of not choosing karefully CONCK as in conking out because I cannot get it all done.
Hmmm. Love to know what you do to address FOMO and how you deal with CONCKing?