113. Missing Something? How to Kick FOMO with Conscious Decision-Making
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hi， mathere， our goal at thinkfasttalksmart is to help you own and develop your communication skills where curious if were hitting the mark web talked about feedback and listening many times on the show and now wed like you to share your thoughts about thinkfasttalksmart wewant to make sure were bringing you the topics and guests that are of interest to you knowingmore about you and the reasons you listen will help us a lot weve created a listenersurvey that would like you to complete will take no more than 5 minuteinit will be very useful the survey can be found at fastersmarderdodio slash feedback， while the survey can be taken anonymously if you do choose to provide your email address， we will enter you into a randomdrawing where three people will win assignedbookeanotherthinkfasttalksmartswag we look forward to hearing your ideas in inputsoon thank you and advance for sharing your feedback and helping us and most importantly thank you for listening again go to fastersmarter dodio slash feedback one of the biggest fears that i strugglewith is the fear of missing out is our better opportunity other people i should be talking to istherightplacetoeatorvisit the fearofmissingoutloomslargeinmylife today will explore fomo and how to dealwith it imatabrahands i teachstrategic communication at Stanford graduate school of business welcome to thinkfast talksmart the podcast today i am really excited to speak with Patrick Mcginnis Patrick is the best selling author of fear of missing out practical decision making in a world of overwhelming choice and the tenpercent entrepenneure he is also the creator in host of the Foo sapians podcast Patrick， thanks so much for being here thanks so much for having me i certainly dont wanna miss out of any of our conversation so lets go i hadngetstarted its hard for me to believe but im actually talking to the originator of the term fomo fear of missing out in preparing for this chat you told me that Foo in your wordshade access in takes us away from our intentions ingetsustodoinsaythings we dont want and probably shouldnt want id love for you to share more about what fomo is and how does it work against us yeah fomos its a word that we use in just a lot its sort of like a meme and it is a word that i created when i wrote about it in a humor article in the newspaper of Harvard business school about twenty years ago when i was a student there？

so sorry standfor people fomao was invented at Harvard and it would have probably stayed there except that all my classmates well go to mcnsi all over the world and started using it and then there was a guy who was my neighbor？

his namese mark Zuckerberg who happened to start this company called Facebook they gave us all fomo when i invented it， i saw it very much as a high class problem of NBA， students who had so many options they could go anywhere they wanted on the weekend they could fly off to Europe they could go on vacation they could apply to million jobs all the sort of stuff now what that has materialized into today is a phenomenon in which many of us becauseof the pernicious effects of social media because of the accelerant that is being able to figure out what other people are doing all the time we are living lives in which we are constantly comparing ourselves to other people were seeing the options are out there and they were saying what im doing right now is in good enough im missing out on something and so its not just about the party or the vacation it goes much much deeper when i go on LinkedIn， i sort to question every decision ive ever made professionally when i see my classmates are the ceo of this or the partner at that and it the reality is of course that all of this is an internal struggle it is something we are putting on ourselves we are creating a narrative inside of our head about something that we dont even really know that much about we dont know if wed like to be a partner to law formera， a partner golden sacks we dont know if we would like to go to this place or do that thing but we create a best case scenario just like we put filters on social media and then we compare our fressing condition to those things and we feel inadequate so thats the highjacking that happens i certainly personally myself have suffered from a lot of foam o its been something that ive struggled with for a longtime and when i learned of the term。

it actually gave me some solest because it helpme realized that i wasnt the only one i mean of theres， a term out there， and people are talking about it then it actually helptopudontoperspective for me however。

i still struggled with it so im wondering if you can suggest waystoreduce or stop fomo and im especially curious of you can give ideas or suggest ways in which communicationplays a role in how we can reduce our fomo i love this problem and part of the reason i love this problem is because the communication that were focusing on is internal it is the internal talktrack of your life and as somebody who is always been highly competitive and love to win my talk track is constantly been im not good enough im not doing the best thing and that is so many of us in the world of mbaas and business people and all things that we all do and its a motivator select fomos not all bad fomos are beautiful motivator and if we can tap into it and control it， and not let it get our hand， it can be wonderful but the problem is if it gets out of hand， it causes us to do bad things， it causes us to feel bad it has a lot of emotional tools theres a real psychological sort of implication here now how then do we manage that internal conversation well， formal is created by two powerful forces the first is what i call the aspirational fomo its the idea that somethings bigger and better shineer， and that we want to have that thing right its a great in a sense because it means that we want more and we have aspirationsbut of course， what happens is that it gets out of him so the aspirational fomos part one the second is heardfollows doing that thing im not should i be doing that thing and that comes from our earliest humans i mean our ancestors they start together impacts because if they got separated， they didnt have the information they didnt have the physical safety they needed of course， today its not physical safety， its psychological safety that were seeking when we have foam so to deal with those we must attack each one for the aspirational foam， we must ask ourselves its a pretty basic set， a question things like is that thing as good is it looks can i affork to do that do i have time to do that what are the tradeoffs i must make to do that and then we must dig into that thing and replace the fear with fax so that we can make a decision based on data not emotion so thats how you attack the aspirational foam on the herd fomo thats a question of motivation and so the question you must ask yourself is why why do i want this thing is this thing i truly want why the agency or my simply following the crowd and we all know from we were little kids that you dont just follow the crowd nobody you know if so and so jumps off her bridge will you jump off of course。

not yet emotionally in psychologically when we have formal were jupping off many bridges so you gottack those two roots and then you were good to go thank you for delineating the inner workingsofhomothe the aspirational verses the herd makes a lot of sense to me id never thought of that， but in reflecting on the Foo i have i certainly have both， but had helpstogavenames to those and the ability to introspect to reflect as a way to help ourselves out of it into change that talktrackmakes a lot of sense to me i love your feared a factcombat the fearby looking at the facts and theyre really questioningourmotivationsmakes a lot of sense so thank you for that youfasocoinedanother termfobofear of a better option can you help us understand what is fobo and how is it different from fomo is a very very highclassproblem fobo stands for fear of a better option its the idea that we are waiting for something slightly better to come along you know youre trying to pick the hotel for the vacation you got three job offers youre on the dating app and you keep swiping and swiping and swiping and you never actually choose and unlike foam o i like to think of sort of this is like drinking wine and smoking foam is like drinking wine you know you can drink some wine and if you have a lot of wine of course。

its bad we have a little wine its OK you have a little more fun do you loosen up your dance？

all that sort of stuff Phobos like smoking nothing good about phobos and also terrible second and affects so it is the kind of thing that i see amongst my friends in Claire from harvr business school the more options you have the more money！

the more power you become tracked within this world of follow because you can because its really an affliction of affluence i love how you used a really powerful analogy of helping clarify through the analogyofdrinkingversus smoking i always look for how peopleexplicateconcepsenyoudid a great job there i two i guess unfortunately enough to have phoboiguess is a gift right？

did you can actually experience it？

so let me ask you the same question i asked regarding fomo what can we do to help reduce or stop fobo from in someways paralyzing us and making us miserable when we should actually be doing quite well？

yeah， exits closetoformo there are very similar characterics year， but again its that internal tarktrack and saying yourself oh， if i just keep looking up， i keep searching， i will find something better and that is filecious because what happens is that we fool ourselves into thinking that the more we look the better， we will come out， but the reality is the longeryou wait the more likely is it impacts some of those options slipped away and that is the danger over time options they dont last forever right they do go away and so number one is to remember that and number two is to have a conversation with yourself about what really matters what are my actually looking for what are my criteria？

a lot of times people get stuck because theyve never set the criteria that are trying to measure towards and so if you do create that right therium， your position to be able to then make better decision now what i do and this is where things get extra fun and i did a fine video for tad around this that was called how to make bad decisions is that a lot of the things it giveme phoboactually are things that dont really matter slikewhichrestaurant to go to， or whichhotel or whichtv to buy stuff like that could because why because when you go on Amazon and you want to buy a pair white socks there are thousand different choices its overwhelming but we live in a world with just too much ioutsourceeverything i never pick the restaurant you pick the restaurant i dont decide the tv i get the wirecutter on your timestdoing for me i just go with what they say and so the more that you do that you outsource simple decision making in your life you actually build up a muscle around decisionmaking in photo that is very powerful so twothings i heard there first。

you need to think about what does success， look like what is it that im really trying to achieve your havesome goals a around that to then help become criteria for decisionmaking， and then when possible dont puchyourself in the position where you have to be concerned about what a potential outcome could be outsourceit if you can i love that idea， i cant tell you in my immediate family， theres a lot of rumination over decisions that i think could be easily outsourced to people who are better serve to make those decisions like wirecutter！

lightconsumerrepordsthings of that nature in a conversation you and i had inadvanceofthis Patrick you shared with me that you love language and love words and i just want a comment on that it comes through in your communication i love that you use words like filatious and pernicious and usernologies to help explain things youre on authoripodcashostyousinglanguageall the time talktome about your thoughts on language and the importance of it and why is it important what you think about when you think about using language effectively thats the best question anyways ever asked me in all of my interviews ever and i mean that i love that they just put a smile on my face because i do love language and i also speak for languages so i speak spashportchizen French and i love 4 languages while and i love the English language to me when yousingwords its its just like a puzzle that your building spontaneously and it why not try to make it as interesting as possible and so to me its just like a constant opportunity to amuse myself and to challenge myself to be clever and thats why i so enjoymeaning people who love words is well and who are clever commersatialists because its sort of like a game youre playing a game that is very spaceinfun the reality is if you use language， creatively！

youll never be bored and i am easily bored so thats really thats really what is for me i appreciate that i to see communication as a puzzle and i love trying to play with communicationia huge fan of aliteration and i always try to throw a literation in wherever i can what i find that you do really interesting and id love for people to listen to how you speak you will use engaging words and vocabulary that might not be as common but you then very quickly INEITHER THEEXAMPLEYOUGIVEORTHEVERYNEXPHRAYSYOUANESSENCEDEFINETHEWORD forus， SOYOUHELPBRINGALONGTHOSEWHOMIGHTNOTKNOWTHEWORD ANYOFUS WHOSERVICETEACHERSEDUCATORS could bring to help people understand what were saying i want to ask you what are you thinking about next whatsthenextterm that youthinking of iputsomethoughtintothismyself and maybe this is just where i am in my age and my stageoflife， but Ive been thinking a lot of fogo fear of growing old and also relatedlyfopofear of peingoften， so im curious whatgoing on for you in terms of your thoughts about whatsnexto look at i love this question？

because i had thought about this but now you just got me to im gonna can i break some news here？

then its such the right place to do this because of the standforconnections so ibm thinking about the venture capital market so i do venture capital investing in addition to the other things i do and right now theres a big retrade happening you know downrounds and renegotiations of terms and things like that and its a very interesting phenomenon that needs a name and people are started say oh， its paid a play and all sort of stuff and i dont like that term i think it sounds very negative because if your adventure capless in your supporting a company and youre able to renegotiate， you know all the crazy terms you had last year and get something you a bit more appropriate and support a company thats a good thing and we should call that out and we should appropriately value it so im calling that a support premium oh， i like it yes and i want to do something with it support premium thats one of the words that i really like and so i hope all you vceslisting i want to be like you know the person from coboy ventures who coined unicorn i want support premium to be big alright well！

we will try to help you with that， but i think support premiums spans beyond just venturecapital i think like fomo and fobo i think there are lots of a areas of our life for that idea resonates well， beforeiandi like to ask some questions of my guests that are a little rapidly answering some of these yes， my first question is targeted based on who you are and what you look out in study so i want to ask you Patrick？

what gives you foam o what giveyoufomothe most formeits social its all socially related i always wondering i missing out on some great conversation or great connection what gives you fomo doesnt everything i left the corporate world to do something very young conventional and i loved every minute of it but i constantly ask myself like is this the right path for me and i think that thats very natural in the human experience and i try to shut it down and i know how to manage it but i always wondershould i have done this other thing would i be better at this other thing and i think you know the answer is maybe right right no when i can relate to that to ivemade several career choices and i often wonderdid i make the right choice im very very thrilled with what i do but its always its a curiosity of what could theother be let me ask you question number two who is a communicator that you admire and why so i just met this woman at a conference on Sweden called Brillia mind her name is Ruby Kur Kuar and Ruby is a poet she got up and read a poem about the female experience it was amazing and you also check out shes got a huge style gram following and just the fact that she stainaged apput doing it is is it has the kind of audiences she has and the things she talks about areneasy and when she performms her poetry it is spell binding and then you hang out with her and shes just like the nicesperson and when i met her， i felt like i know her for years she is able to connect with people in a way that i find amazing whether shes on a stage or in a small conversation and i just came a waving like i really really admire her！

inotsurprisethatyoupixsomebodywhoseslanguage inthcase poetry to be effective and that itsomebody whos passionate and really connecting and that seems to be who you are to questionnumber 3 finalquestion what are the first three ingrediancetheygointo？

a successful communication recipe？

i love this question the first is truth we got to be truequals like this information， this information its the worst truth is number one number， two humility whenyourcommunicating， whois the star of the show its not you its the person who receives the communication whether youre， a writer， apockasterer， or just a person having a chat NUMBER3， gotta have a little personal style！

a little curisma and so we have this rich language its amazing use it i absolutely agree and i think based on what weve talked about today Patrick i think its not just objectivetruetruth outsideof us， but also part of what you talked about in terms of managing fomo and fobos we have to think about our innertruth in whatsimple starits all about them absolutely one hundred percent we hear that a lot on this podcast and wholeheartedly believe it i want to hear just a little bit more about pinash i love this idea besides the language we use what else can convey this notion of pinassh a good question and by the way everybody should have the experience or having matt summarize what you just said cuz its like its great i you want you summarize in like did i its here itbetter than what i said its ive very impressed your good listener thank you my wife would disagree by the way but yes thank you bring me pinached sort of like we spend so much time look good buying nice clothes getting dress stop and aws sort of stuff and then we open our mouth and we should do the same we should try to have a little bit of style！

a little bit of careers my little bit of elegance language is incredible way to connect with people and if you invest in language， youre ability to meet people and make an impression on them its incredible and ive found as i become a stronger communicator i look at everytime， i talk as an opportunity to just experiment， presfile。

improvise and just engage with people and the more that you adable flavor the better youd do its like cooking a good recipe a little extra flavor makes a big different just put two merican everything its gonna be delicious excellent i like it the point you made there that i really took to heart is we dress up our sales for important communicationlets dress up our languageswell Patrick this is been fantastic thankyouforbeinghere we have all learned a lot about the way we can approach our lives and grabs reducesomeotherstress impression wepudonyoursells i certainly have i wish you well withyourbooksphere of missing out as well as the ten percent entrepreneur and congratulations on the success of fomos apians your podcast thank you i wanna thank you for offering me support premium and i wish you the best of luck， thanksforjoiningus for another episode of thinkfasttalksmarkthepodcast from Stanford graduate school of business this episode was produced by Jenny Luna Ryan campus and me matabrams arm music was provided by Floyd wonder for more information and episodes find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts thank you and please make sure to subscribe and follow us on linkedm， hi Mattier beforewejumpin i wanted to let you know about threeunique executiveeducation programs offered to senior level business leaders by the Stanford graduate school of business the executive program in leadership the emergingcfo program in the directorsconsortium program are allbeing hosted here on stanfords beautiful campus in the next few months crafted with proven strategiesforsuccessandfieldwithdiverse leaders from around the globe taught by many of the guests youheard on thinkfasttalksmart applytoday at growth dotstanfordaddu slash upcoming to join us。