FOMO Or JOMO?

By giving in to fomo, we waste not just huge amounts of emotional energy, but time too.

- Amantha Imber

Recently I was in a video conference with around 20 other attendees. It was run by the organisers of a fast-growth technology company’s global summit. All attendees had been selected to present at the summit and the call’s purpose was to learn about presentation strategies.

At this point, I need to confess something: The organisers had actually told me I didn’t need to attend this meeting, as it was only for first-time speakers. Despite this, something compelled me to hop on the call, for fear that I might miss some gem of wisdom.

The meeting was booked for two hours and, at the 20-minute mark, I decided to surreptitiously drop off the call. I had realised, even as an organisational psychologist who is well versed in FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), I had given in to its siren song. And I needed to reclaim the rest of the one hour and 40 minutes I could potentially lose.

FOMO is rife in most offices. We expect to be copied in every email that might possibly relate to our projects or our team, we accept meeting invitations that we don’t really need to attend, and we unhappily glance at the huge number of ‘likes’ everyone else’s LinkedIn posts seem to attract.

By missing out on a call, email or meeting, we worry that we won’t gain that critical piece of information needed to make our project a success. We worry we will miss that moment to shine in our boss’s eyes. And by giving in to FOMO, we waste not just enormous amounts of emotional energy, but time, too.

According to Social Comparison Theory, we are hardwired to compare ourselves with others. But when it comes to FOMO, the specific type of comparison we make is an ‘upward comparison’, where our target is someone who is seemingly doing much better than us. By contrast, our career is always going to be doomed to failure.