Fear of Missing Out: Practical Decision-Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice

by Patrick J. McGinnis

Overview

What are you really missing out on?

You're home on a Friday night, scrolling through Instagram, ready to go to bed.

You see pictures on your timeline of a party you were invited to, but didn't go to. You were confident when you said no, but now you can't stop thinking about it, and you start feeling worse.

You have FOMO, or, Fear of Missing Out.

Coined in a Harvard Business School article, FOMO has become a global term to describe the decimating anxiety when thinking other people are having better, more fulfilling, experiences than you are. It's a natural, biological response, but that doesn't make it feel any better. Amplified by the rise of social media, #FOMO has become a cultural crisis—so what's the cure?

Patrick McGinnis, creator of the term FOMO, has been thinking about it for seventeen years—and he has a solution: decision-making. Learning to weigh the costs and benefits of your choices, prioritizing your decisions, and listening to your gut are central to silencing FOMO and its lesser-known cousin, FOBO: Fear of a Better Option. After all, don't you want to feel comfortable and confident in your decisions?

Written with self-evaluations throughout the book, Fear of Missing Out: Practical Decision Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice helps you ascertain and eliminate the parts of your life that are causing more anxiety than happiness.

So give this a read, and then go to that party, start that new book, create a new goal—or don't. Make that decision, and be confident in it: it's the first of many of its kind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781492694946
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	05/05/2020
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	995,389
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Patrick J. McGinnis has been studying FOMO since he created the term nearly two decades ago, and he has developed a fresh approach to decision-making to beat it. Learning to weigh the costs and benefits of your choices, prioritizing your decisions, and listening to your gut are central to silencing FOMO and its lesser-known cousin, FOBO: Fear of a Better Option. After all, don't you want to feel comfortable and confident in your decisions?

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Section I Fear and Indecision in an Overwhelming World xix

Chapter 1 A Brief History of FOMO 1

Chapter 2 Your FOMO's Not Your Fault 11

Chapter 3 More Than a Meme 29

Chapter 4 The Other FO You Need to Know 39

Chapter 5 The Sad Tate of the Man Who Got Everything He Wanted 47

Section II The Hidden Cost of Fear 67

Chapter 6 The Billion-Dollar Business of FOMO 69

Chapter 7 FOBO, the Anti-Strategy 85

Section III Decisive: Choosing What You Actually Want and Missing Out on the Rest 101

Chapter 8 Freedom from Fear 103

Chapter 9 Don't Sweat the Small Stuff 111

Chapter 10 FOMO Is for the Planets, Not the Sun 129

Chapter 11 Choosing Action over Option Value 141

Chapter 12 Missing Out on the Rest 155

Section IV Making FOMO and FOBO Work for You 175

Chapter 13 Going All In Some of the Time 177

Chapter 14 Game of FOs: Dealing with FOMO and FOBO in Other People 195

Epilogue: We're Lucky to Have Options in the First Place 205

Author's Note 211

Acknowledgments 213

Notes 217

Index 227

About the Author 235

Editorial Reviews

03/23/2020

Venture capitalist McGinnis (The 10% Entrepreneur) breaks down the evolutionary responses known as the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and Fear of Better Options (FOBO) in this lucid analysis. FOMO (“Social pressure resulting from the realization that you will miss out on or be excluded from a positive or memorable collective experience”) and FOBO (“An anxiety-driven urge to hold out for something better based on the perception that a more favorable alternative or choice might exist”) are terms McGinnis coined in articles he wrote while studying at Harvard Business School. These two fears, he argues, have plagued mankind since the beginning of time and have been exacerbated by social media. To overcome both FOMO and FOBO, he writes, one must center personal values and responsibilities and weigh them against outcomes: “When you find the power to choose what you actually want and the courage to miss out on the rest, you are finally liberated from indecision and the compulsion to have it all.” To this end, he provides steps for making decisions on social plans, strategies for saying “no” in different situations, and rules for overcoming fear. This is a useful one-stop shop for those looking to take a decisive stand against the fear of what could have been. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"Timely, practical, and insightful... In Fear of a Missing Out, McGinnis addresses one of the greatest barriers to happiness, unpacks why we feel FOMO, and chronicles how it can hijack both your personal and professional lives. Then he shows you how to live life on your own terms instead of letting life happen to you." - Shawn Achor, happiness researcher and New York Times bestselling author of Big Potential and The Happiness Advantage

"Whether it's life's trivial details or its major crossroads, decision-making can be stressful and all-consuming. In this timely and essential book, Patrick J. McGinnis shows you why it doesn't have to be that way." - Kerry Kennedy, president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and New York Times bestselling author

"We live in an age of unprecedented choice. That makes the thousands of the decisions you face each day more complex than ever before. Using the frameworks of FOMO and FOBO, McGinnis gives you a set of user-friendly tools to make smarter, better choices." - Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable

"Patrick J. McGinnis has written the right book for our fraught moment in time. Smart, careful, and a pleasure to read, Fear of Missing Out shows the reader not only what FOMO means and does but how we can learn to escape its clutches and pursue lives of meaning instead." - Debora L. Spar, MBA Class of 1952 Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

"In Fear of Missing Out, Patrick J. McGinnis dives deep into the underlying reason behind [FOMO], shows us why we have FOMO, and helps us discover what we actually want so we can say yes to the things that we really want to be a part of. Because if you know what you want, you aren't really missing out, then, are you?" - Dr. Will Cole, leading functional medicine expert, IFMCP, DC, author of The Inflammation Spectrum and Ketotarian, and cohost of the Goopfellas podcast

"Patrick is a true innovator when it comes to helping you identify how (shockingly) much FOBO [Fear of a Better Option] messes with your relationships, business, and routine tasks...then he trains your anti-FOBO muscles. FOMO may get all the meme attention, but FOBO is the real enemy of choosing what shirt to wear, developing friendships that have value, or scaling your dream startup to an exit." - Jack Kramer and Nick Martell, cohosts of Robinhood's podcast Snacks Daily

"Fear of Missing Out is an indispensable handbook for anyone who wants to spend each day actually living their life instead of wasting precious time on indecision. Patrick is both generous and genuine, which is a rare gift in this world." - Cathy Heller, creator and host of the podcast Don't Keep Your Day Job

"Whether you're managing a Fortune 500 company, an entrepreneurial venture, or your day-to-day life, you will need to be resolute if you're going to succeed. This book provides easy to use yet powerful strategies to push past indecision and focus on what matters." - Dorie Clark, executive education faculty, Duke University Fuqua School of Business, and author of Entrepreneurial You and Reinventing You

"After first coining FOMO, McGinnis invented FOBO (Fear of a Better Option) to describe an even more destructive set of behaviors. Now he's back with a clear, step-by-step, and powerful approach to help people stop looking over their shoulders and instead embrace the real and exciting possibilities before them." - Jamie Metzl, leading futurist and bestselling author of Hacking Darwin

"It took me nearly dying five times to learn what Patrick so eloquently shares in this must-read book: we must find the power to choose what we actually want and the courage to miss out on the rest. Patrick McGinnis does a brilliant job providing concrete guidance for how to do this (without needing to have the near-death experiences!). This book has an urgent message for anyone living in 2020: You don't have to live with regret. Step one is to read this book." - Dr. David Fajgenbaum, author of Chasing My Cure and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

"Fascinating, liberating, this could inspire FOMO in all who choose to leave it on the shelf." - Booklist

"This is a useful one-stop shop for those looking to take a decisive stand against the fear of what could have been." - Publishers Weekly

"As the creator of the term FOMO, Patrick J. McGinnis is uniquely positioned to lead the fight against this very modern affliction. In his powerful new book, McGinnis shows us how to take back control of the way we live and work. It is a must-read for all of us who want to escape the anxiety of indecision, live with more intention, and thrive." - Arianna Huffington, Founder & CEO, Thrive Global

"A useful guide for choosing what you actually want in an age when doing so is increasingly difficult." - Tony Hsieh, New York TImes bestselling author of Delivering Happiness and CEO of Zappos.com, Inc.

"The author outlines a decision-making model that helps them home in on what really matters by tuning out distractions and leveraging technology, thereby living comfortably with the decisions they've made...superb advice. " - Library Journal

From the Publisher

05/01/2020

McGinnis's latest (The 10% Entrepreneur) guides readers in finding the power to choose what they desire out of life and the courage to miss out on the rest. He points out that FOMO (fear of missing out) is a highly addictive and destructive way to live, and that FOBO, fear of a better option, is equally harmful and paralyzing. The author outlines a decision-making model that helps them home in on what really matters by tuning out distractions and leveraging technology, thereby living comfortably with the decisions they've made. VERDICT This book's superb advice will appeal primarily to millennials and members of Gen Z.

Library Journal

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