Prioritization and the downsides of FOMO at Work

If you are anything like me, you like to be recognized for doing good work, you like learning new things, and new projects are exciting so its hard to turn them down. Career FOMO (fear of missing out) seems like it might be a good thing at first. Proactively engaged employees that want to use their current skills and develop new ones. Sounds great, right? There is a dark side to over-extending ourselves by engaging too broadly. In today's article, we're going to review some of the negative impacts of being too involved.

Failure to Deliver

There is a reason we equate work to feats like plate spinning or juggling. We have to split our focus on many tasks and projects and can't lose track of any of them. The consequence of losing sight of one plate is its inevitable collapse. If you have been paying attention to the rest of your work, maybe there is only an isolated impact, but, at worst, this could also lead to a catastrophic failure across all of your projects (e.g. the dreaded burnout). If you are spread too thin across too many projects, you are likely going to miss something you wouldn't have if you were more focused. If you miss enough times, the sterling reputation you built by always saying yes will inevitably be tarnished by lack-luster results. Maintaining focus, and occasionally not volunteering for the extra work will help you preserve your sanity and carefully crafted image.

Limiting Growth

One way to think about growth is using the 'Leadership Pipeline' model, where you develop from an individual contributor to a leader of people to a leader of leaders, and so on. To make the jump between stages, in particular the early ones, you need to develop a new set of skills. What made you successful up to this point will not necessarily propel you to the next stage of your career. If you are still taking on the work you did previously, you won't have the energy to engage with the new type of work expected of you. Not only will you limit your own growth, but you hamper your coworkers and employees chance to learn and grow as well. If you continue to take on work that your teammates should be handling, you prevent them from developing the capabilities needed to fill in for you as your role evolves.

AI will replace the 'Jack of All Trades'

If you read the last point, and thought it didn't apply because you aren't looking to move into leadership, then consider the impact of AI on individual contributor roles. In the near future it will be 'good enough' at many tasks we do today. If you spread yourself thin, getting a shallow understanding of many topics, you may find AI making your knowledge work obsolete. However, if you have deep expertise, you will be able deliver insightful and creative solutions which is something I'd expect GenAI to struggle with for the foreseeable future, as its output is a statistical average of its training data. I like the take in this video on the recent GPT5 announcement, and while the creator is focused primarily on software development, we see the same thoughts shared in media and other spaces. AI will supplement knowledge workers who have deep expertise and are able to direct its output, but those with a shallow knowledge pool that are more dependent on AI to guide them will flounder and be replaced.

Today, we looked at some of the downsides of spreading yourself thin at work by volunteering to take on more than you can handle or getting involved in other's work. While lending a hand at a critical moment or volunteering for a new project can open doors to develop new skills or a broader network, we do need to be aware of personal limitations and the risk that over extension places on our other commitments. Being cognizant of that trade off and aware of the potential pitfalls associated with career FOMO should help us make wiser decisions about where to invest our limited time.

Do you have any tips on prioritizing your time and effort? Please share below!