FOMO – Fear of Missing Out – at Work

FOMO is a disease that has been growing (as well as many other mental health diseases) since, in @2010, our (online) life went mobile. We are on all the time, for work and for pleasure. But our brains were not made for that. I love the phrase from Edward O. Wilson ‘“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.”

We come from an era, pre-Covid, where we pretty much worked and managed teams ‘a la industrial era’ : micromanagement; 8 to 5, 5 days a week work schemes; teams used to being dictated on what to do; a lot of work done ‘on the go’, at the office, in between colleagues.

Now, in a pos-pandemic phase, people are feeling ‘freer’ from traffic jam and from the stress to go to the office and many are avoiding to return due to the ‘fake’ feeling that work-life balance is better when we bring our office to our living room. Well, I do believe it is a fake feeling for many. Not everybody knows how to manage well FOMO. There are some people that simply can’t disconnect and feel that they must be online all the time. This is causing a lot of burn out, a lot of resignations, a lot of stress and workload that are completely unnecessary.

We – companies, leaders, employees - need to redesign our work situation to a pos-pandemic phase. Our brains aren’t made to be full time on.

To start, some tips about how to better control FOMO at work (and they aren’t very different than how to better control FOMO privately):

1.??????Most critical one – learn how to say NO: focus on what is really a ‘must do’ to deliver your goals

2.??????Set healthy boundaries: switch off the phone in the weekend or when you are with your family, for eg

3.??????Take small breathing or meditation breaks: love this one, mainly when I am in a busy traveling week period

4.??????Learn when to shut down: switch off the phone 1 hour before going to bed, for eg

5.??????Change your mindset: you don’t need to be part of every single meeting/call/activity. This won’t make you more or less committed. To deliver on your goals, not to join meetings, is what is expected from you at work

6.??????Take it seriously: you can have a burn out if you don’t.

How the new work environment will look like, pos pandemic: I don’t know. I think we will be working on it for some time still but, well, the best way to start any transformation is with transforming ourselves first….

?

???