Career FOMO: Is the Fear of Missing Out guiding your decisions?

If you’re on any social media platform (and considering the world we live in, I believe everyone is), I am certain you experience some form of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). It could be FOMO in your personal life, FOMO in relationships or FOMO in your social life. The worst kind of FOMO, in my opinion, is the Career FOMO. 

What exactly is Career FOMO? 

Every time you see someone doing better at their job, every time you feel less than because you’re not moving up the corporate ladder as you want to, you become a victim to Career FOMO. The fact is, by giving into this fear of missing out, not only are you wasting enormous amounts of emotional energy but also a lot of time; time that you could be spending more productively. 

The main reason you experience FOMO is that you are not aware of what truly motivates you and you start evaluating your achievements and failures based on what others around you are accomplishing. To rid yourself of this FOMO, it is vital that you reacquaint yourself with what truly motivates you. Ask yourself, what it is you truly enjoy because when you’re intrinsically motivated, you will automatically tune out the outside world because you’re so immersed in your work. 

A toxic offshoot of Career FOMO is Opportunity FOMO or the fear of missing out on any and every opportunity with regard to career and professional growth. If you constantly question and doubt the various elements of your work, your performance will be negatively affected and your sense of job satisfaction will slowly but surely dissipate. 

I know a lot of people who say yes to every work opportunity that comes there way and justify it by calling it their “big break”. Over-scheduling, committing to unrealistic hours and projects, registering for every networking event, webinar, workshops or classes is a sign that you’re becoming a victim of Career FOMO. This happens because you feel like a failure if you’re not devoting every second of your free time to propel your career forward?

Career FOMO is especially a problem when you join a new company. As part of your zeal to prove yourself, you try and take on too much too soon and that is when the real problem begins. In your excitement to prove yourself to the new employer, you try to add value everywhere, and while the intention behind your action is to be appreciated, it is not one that ends up serving you or the company you’ve joined. 

Success or failure early on is the best indicator of your overall success or failure in the position. There is no disagreement with the fact that early wins in a new role go a long way towards establishing your foundation and helping cement your position as someone who is getting assimilated into the culture of the organization. 

So, how can you minimize this Career FOMO? 

There are several things you can do:

(A) Work on projects that challenge you.

When you work on a project that is either too difficult or too simple, chances are that your mind will wander and most likely, it will wander to social media where you will see your friends and acquaintances doing really well in their lives which will upset you. The only way to combat that is to find a project that appropriately challenges you. Think of it as a Goldilocks project – not too easy, not too difficult, it is the perfect fit for your skillset and keeps you focussed. 

(B) Do a social media reality check.

Let’s face it, you’re not going to give up social media, and I don’t want you to! What you can do is to train yourself to view your social media with a different lens. The fact is, everyone posts the best of their lives on social media and you do the same. This is why it makes no sense to compare the reality of your life to the best of someone else’s. Everyone has problems, everyone faces challenges. You need to train yourself to not get disheartened by what you see on social media because that is not the ultimate reality. It is only a brief moment that has been shared. 

(C) Work is infinite, time is finite.

Repeat this mantra every day, “I cannot do it all.”

What this means this that there will be things that you will miss out on but missing out on things doesn’t mean it’s the end of your career. The harder you work, the higher the standards that you will hold yourself to. This attitude will bring you dangerously closer to workaholic territory and result in burnout, sooner than later. A meaningful life is a balance of work, social life and personal life and extreme focus on any one will cause an imbalance in all areas of your life. You must understand that your life is more than your job title and you will do a much better job in your workplace if you are fulfilled outside of work. 

Career FOMO will have you running trying to run fast in every direction which will get you nowhere. This is not the time to try and be everything to everyone. Understand the 80/20 rule. Understand the 20% of the work that you need to do that will bring you 80% of the results and even then take a phased approach. Understand what you need to learn and understand who you need to connect with to understand what this 20% of work is, because this 20% work you do will make 80% of the difference to your career. This will allow you to plant deep roots in the organization.