 All right. Well, hello and welcome to the show Patrick. It's great to have you. It's great to be here Well, we are huge fans of the term FOMO Johnny and I have brought it up numerous times and all the other various acronyms that at times I'm sure have led some of our audience members to scratch their heads So it's so fun to talk to the person who coined the term FOMO. How did you come up with FOMO? People think FOMO is this kind of new thing that came around in the last five ten years But actually FOMO is basically not even a teenager anymore because I invented it back in 2003 So I was living in New York City 2001 working as a venture capitalist and two things happen number one the tech Sort of bubble burst and all the companies I invested in basically were write-offs and it was a disaster We're firing people all over the place and it really shook me to see all this sort of I thought I was gonna strike it rich and then the next day everything goes to zero and then shortly thereafter We had the 9-11 attacks and I lived in lower Manhattan about a mile away from where everything happened And that shook me even more and so those two events Made me question everything. I thought I knew about the world and they also made me want to live every day Like it was my last and so around that time I actually took my GMAT on September 10th, 2001 and applied to business school and I got into Harvard Business School And when I went there in the fall, I came in with this Carpe Diem mentality And I wanted to do everything and it's a place Harvard Business School is a very choice-rich environment You can take tons of classes. You can go to tons of party tons of trips You can apply for a gazillion jobs and I did all of that I mean if you had thrown a rock at any event on campus whether it was a party or a company presentation You would have hit me and so I just realized that in this desire to do it all actually I was spending a lot of time feeling stressed out I mean I was either sick or tired or hungover or stressed out and this anxiety was something that was new to me Because I grown up on a small town in Maine where not a lot happened And so I decided to give it a name I called it fear of missing out shorten it to FOMO and wrote an article in the school newspaper the Harvest called Social Theory at HBS McGinnis is to foes about FOMO and another term called FOBO and it came out on It was made 10 2004 and then you know fast forward in 2013 is in the dictionary and today It's you know there if you Google it there is 10 million hits It's become sort of part of our culture But it all started on a little plot of land in Boston and what's funny is I feel many of us relate so much to the explosion of social media Because social media it feels like is what's creating this fear of seeing everyone else in their highlight reel But this even predates social media that is you know I always think about when I lived on campus so the the campus of HBS You actually live right there and these dorms and apartments and stuff So you kind of didn't need social media because our school was kind of like a mash-up of LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter and You know Instagram although none of them existed at the time But the funny thing is while I was inventing FOMO just a mile away across the river Some kids named Mark Zuckerberg Eduardo Severin and a couple of others were putting together the first version of the Facebook In fact one of my classmates from business school rented out her apartment over the summer to this to this undergraduate from Harvard Who was working on a business idea and he basically left the place super dirty and she got in a fight with him He didn't want to give him back his deposit and his name was Mark Zuckerberg believe it or not So it's just crazy to think I mean I think he ended up creating something slightly more valuable than me But but I'm okay. I think they were meant to come together into this world Well, certainly all these new technological tools has amplified this feeling but this feeling has been I think is in all young people as they venture into the world they have endless options of skills and direction and with Outerly experiencing too much those roads are all dark and new who wants to go down the wrong road Who wants to put their investment in something that they're gonna find out later that they're not interested in I? Can attest to that in myself of being in my 20s and Even for a young age for myself. I was always involved in music. I've always wanted to play music however in my mid 20s, I found myself in North Carolina traveling down that road of a music career With the very beginnings of social media and so much advertising all around me I remember being upset of Am I missing out on other aspects of life because I've already chosen this path and it would Freak me out and then when I the more I thought about it the more I was like well I'm doing the one thing that I want to do. Why am I being pulled in all these directions? Well, you're being pulled in all these directions because that's what good advertising enticement does it certainly Finds those weaknesses and those triggers and exploits them for for its own gain the entire Marketing industry is built upon FOMO. If we think about the definition of FOMO, right definition FOMO is a Perception there's something better out there than what you're doing or have right now combined with a fear of being excluded from a group Collective experience. It's favorable. So it's number one. There's an aspirational. It's all about this perception That something better is out there number two It's about this herd mentality But the thing about it and you just hit the nail on the head is that you know perception can very much be Deception right great marketers know how to take that information asymmetry between what we're living in our present moment Like what when you're sitting on your couch versus that beautifully airbrushed filtered perception of reality that somebody else is living and when we fill in the blanks That's where we get into trouble And so if you had perfect information and you could say okay, you know that path that somebody else is doing You know the investment banker who's making all the money or the rockstar who's getting all the girls or whatever that is if you could Actually see what's going on behind the scenes and realize like actually there's a lot of hard work or a lot of rejection Or you know, you don't make any money. You wouldn't have FOMO But of course that is what's happening is it's marketing either real marketing done by some sort of company or just the marketing of social media or or Perception well, I think for many of us fire festival perfectly encapsulated exactly what you're talking about where Deception rang true But the way it was marketed the entire world at least certainly in that age demographic and this leads to my other question for you is Do you find the older you get the less FOMO you have is this something that is really Dependent on your age and as Johnny said being early enough in your life Experience where everything feels like the best option and the more experience you have the more you realize behind the scenes How much work how little it actually mirrors what that marketing is showing you So there's definitely a correlation between life experience and FOMO and so I look deeply into this in the book and research and talk to clinical psychologists and Everybody from a clinical psychologist to a Buddhist monk to to a priest to you know You name it to kids a 12 year old and what I found is that yes when you're when you're a kid Like babies have a lot of FOMO because they're new to the world and everything is exciting It's like everything's a shiny bright object and then as we get more autonomy in our lives And we can actually capitalize on these things You know we have agency our FOMO increases because it's like I can actually do these things now that I was observing as a small child and then you get into your 20s and your 30s and and it increases for a period of time But then when you get really busy and you have lots of things going on in your life actually decreases because you kind of know It's like you can assess things with more information and you have less time and energy to actually chase after those things Now interestingly though as people near the end of their life the FOMO comes running back Why is that number one you have more time like say you're retired? So it's like okay I have time to think about these things that you know I might want to do number two is that you start to realize like the days are numbered like I want to do XYZ this is the classic driver of the midlife crisis, right? It's like you see the guy in the two tight jeans with like a woman who's the age of his daughter You know and the car and there you know and he's just got like a two-pay on It's because the guy has he wants to try to do it all before it's too late And so it comes back with a vengeance towards the end of our lives days Slowly become numbered and we're staring at our own mortality. We certainly want to amp up the experiences something else that had dawned on me and we talked a little bit about this before we started Two things for a lot of older people If you ask them about wedstock their answer is oh, I was there when we all know So there's these events in life that when people look back they Throw themselves in or they want to be a part of that movement or that situation And now we find ourselves in a global pandemic and when this started I had taken a picture of myself with a With a piece of paper that says welcome to history Because it was a history that all of us were going to be a part of this is not going to be I wish I could have been there. This was regardless of how you feel about it. You are thrust into this Psychological experiment that you had not signed up for that all of us are in And will we look back at this pandemic 20 30 years on a rogue one? I remember it was great We didn't do anything. We sat around we talked to each other on zoom When we remember this very fondly or would be the terrifying Experience that we had just went through because those first two weeks when no one knew what was going on and this was stressed upon us Was utterly terrifying However, as it slowed down and people got into a groove and for some people they were able to continue working It has been a bit of a an opportunity to reflect and look at things that make some course correction For a lot of people. It's also a terrible time of of where are they going to go But there is going to be history between this event and our and how we remember it And I wonder if that is going to change and if we look at it with fomo Of well, here's what I did to take full advantage of that situation Johnny, I love the way you put that because when it first started so in the days leading up I was I was sort of late to the to locking myself inside and I live in new york city So I probably locked myself inside march 15th in the week before that People had disappeared from the streets and I started making these instagram stories called about fogo fear of going out Which which i've seen that term now gaining currency on instagram So I just want to tell people that I do believe I invented that and I want to I want to put it on on record But yeah, like we we had this weird period right before lockdown where everybody bought all the toilet paper There was this rush on toilet paper right and people weren't they wanted that last party And so a bunch of people went to spring break and it was very controversial And then there was this initial period where there was silence and we read all the books We've been meaning to read and we learned how to make grandma's favorite pie and we watched succession You know we binged it and I was like kind of and I remember I was thinking to myself. Well This is amazing. It feels like it's 1997 or something And and it was a it was a moment actually that felt pretty good and then I I you know, I'm a keen observer of fomo and I started to see some things that were interesting Number one is I started to see a bunch of people that I knew on facebook telling me their covid story They hadn't been tested for covid But they they believed that they may have had it and they wanted to share it And there was like this fomo around having had covid which is crazy And maybe some people did but I was just sort of puzzled by that and then I started to see that Actually the thing about it is this so our screens Remember social media is an important part of this right the more time we spend on our screens the more likely were to have some sort of fomo Did you look at your screen time over the last couple of months and how it evolved my screen time doubled? And so I started to feel This different type of fomo. It was more profound It was more about the life I could have been leading but it was very um It was not gone. And so I think that You know, there were all these tweets that were like a fomo is dead fomo was killed by the pandemic Well in the new york times have said that fomo survived the corona virus and I think that That the reality is what I think we're going to see is That when we go outside of our homes again The fomo is going to be Insane and I think that's okay because we'll still have something to miss out on Which is wonderful and as we look back on this time What I hope happens and for everybody who's listening if you're still inside Take stock of what you thought you were going to do. Everybody thought they were gonna I remember this is like tweet. My mom sent me. I was like mom. This is cool She's like well shakespeare wrote king lear during a quarantine So you should write another book and I was like mom Let me just get this one out, right? But but then you know, you think about it A lot of us have these big plans of doing these amazing things. I'm going to get in crazy shape I'm gonna get ripped. I got the peloton app three three months like Get ready How many of us did those things and so as you think about the time left or if you're spending more time inside in the next month like Kind of reflect on what you thought you were going to do what you actually did Look at your digital usage and then recalibrate and try to make that time more valuable what I found was Slightly along those lines that I was actually missing my fomo So I was trying to engage with other people's social media less for those exact reasons I didn't necessarily need an inside look at how everyone else's quarantine was going because I was living it myself here in california But I started spending more time Thinking back about the trips I was on and those opportunities that I turned down for lame excuses Oh, I'm too tired to go on that hike or oh, that's across town. I'm not going to make it to that event and thinking wow What if I can't go back and do those things? What if traveling to those destinations in europe was really my one chance and I didn't let my fomo Push me out the door. I didn't actually listen to that Instead I tried to ignore it and push it aside and label it as just fomo to move away from it So I found myself yearning for fomo and it's so interesting that now you're saying We're going to see it quadruple as we come out of quarantine And we're going to feel even more fomo than probably before we were locked away here in sheltering at home I think that's a really interesting point you brought up which is that our fomo Can be positive, right? So it may be That in in sitting at home and thinking about the things that you wish you had done You come up with the the game plan for the next three years of your life, right? And so the the the important thing to do and the way to make fomo productive is to think critically It's like okay great. So I'm feeling this feeling right now. So let's go back to is it perception? Is it this aspirational thing? Is it the herd or is this real now? am I actually able to assess things from a you know from a perspective of Rationality and objectivity and say no, you know what like next year go to italy because I've learned to appreciate something That maybe I took for granted before and I do think that's a really valuable aspect of all of this is that When you're so there's a I have this conversation with Jay Shetty who I'm sure you guys have know and and um And he was telling me that there is some stat out there like that people if given a choice would rather um choice between spending 15 minutes With their own thoughts or getting electric shock would rather they rather the shock, right? Because it's so hard to be introspective But if there's anything that you can take out of this time It's like spending a little time thinking a little more critically about how you're gonna a sort of investor time going forward and then you know Yes, we're gonna have a lot of temptations But if you can take a little out of this about what's important to you then Then you can actually make this time something that Has value for you rather than simply just having spent, you know All your time binging on all the new streaming services that seem to come out perfectly timed for a pandemic Well, I think the the good part about the initial part of the shelter at home is we burn through all of the Tiger king episodes and everything else that we could handle and now we're at the part of the streaming services We're like, I can't believe they made this why am I sitting here watching this? So I feel like we now at least we've been locked down here in the state of california long enough where We can and this is something that I've been working on with amy is looking at This time in our lives as johnny said is historic and when we come out of it We're gonna look back on it and we're gonna reflect and say, you know Did I hit those goals that I had set for myself? Did I use this time wisely or did I allow myself to? Focus on the wrong things and it's not very often in your life where you get a full reset Where you can literally interrogate everything you're doing in your life your habits your routines your rituals and say Well, was I doing this for status? Was I doing this for the herd or was I really doing this because it Derived me a lot of joy and it created purpose in my life So that's what I hope those in our audience are using this time for and I know it's not easy Certainly the uncertainty and the emotional toll that being locked away from friends and family Has on you is not healthy and also being forced to work remotely Where many of us don't necessarily thrive in our small apartments in new york city with everyone else Sheltering with us on their own zoom calls So you bring up a couple other acronyms that probably many in our audience haven't encountered and phobo being one of them So let's walk through these other acronyms that you've coined and let's get the full plethora vocabulary out of the way I think a phomo a little like drinking wine or a couple beers It's like a little phomo loosens you up Maybe you explore doing something that you maybe wouldn't have done before You ask out that girl or you you know go on the dance floor at the wedding And it's great and you have fun and you learn something too much phomo Not good. Not a good look. You're gonna end up in a bad place Now the other foe that I wrote about wrote about way back in business school is phobo and unlike FOMO there are no redeemable qualities. I think about it like smoking cigarettes like bad for you bad for the people around you And um, you know, maybe feels good in the moment, but um people want to run away from you. Why is that? Phobo stands for fear of a better option. It's basically a desire to maximize And a viewpoint in which you think having options and preserving option value is actually Sort of valuable in and of itself. So let me give you an example Let's let's take a really simple example So you have phobo when you're in a choice rich environment So you have to make some decision and you've got a bunch of different things you can choose from that are acceptable Very simple is going on to netflix like we're going on a seamless to order food I I mean, I'll tell you I'll be honest like I go on to seamless I'm 45 minutes later I cook because it's so overwhelming and I can't decide now Now when we're talking about phobo in a really sort of more serious way It's like when you treat everybody in your life like a tinder feed swipe swipe swipe Keep all the options open never commit to anybody And so when you do that with relationships with job opportunities with social opportunities With where you're going to live all of these types of things You end up living in a world of indecision and paralysis because here's the bad news There is no perfect decision. We can't truly maximize We've got to accept that every decision is like an investment You take some risk for a return and so if you keep on waiting to make decisions You're never going to get anywhere and that's what people with phobo have when For myself being a somebody who's 46 years old there was Certainly I have lived half my life where there wasn't all this option And now I'm living a life where there is endless option and they're even coming up with terms For endless options. You brought up the dating apps. There's a term of chasing Falling in love over and over again because you have endless opportunity to do that. It's called limerence. We did a show on it and For our own classes that we have at the Yard of Charm One of my favorite sections to talk about and go through the lecture is the decision making process that we're all in Because I could see the young guys sitting on the couch Who start to get a bit squirmy when I start to talk about decision making Because when it comes to analytical problem-solving people they figure out if I do enough research Then a clear lit up path will present itself and I can choose however as As we all know There's many times in life where there is not going to be a clearly defined a lit up answer and for myself I devised the saying Which was uh when there is no right or wrong decisions. There's only decisions that you make right Which allowed me to realize there isn't going to be one to show up And I now I need to take all of my energy and make whatever I choose produce Something of value whether it was a learning experience or a direction a path That allows that decision making process to feel good And then it only and it continues from there But young people now They the idea of making decisions is incredibly difficult and I loved in the book how there was a full on a couple chapters where you just laid out A process which analytical people can follow to make decisions easily I want to dig in on that process The the key point that I want to make and we we brought this up on our decision making Episode is the opportunity cost that many of us don't think about that's included within decision Time is not something that you can pause while you're indecisive and trying to figure out What's the right path for me the time is still going by and there is ultimately a cost associated with that Opportunity either closing or passing you by so how can we use FOMO for good in our lives and overcome This decision making process that is really intimidating especially for our younger audience members FOMO is sort of a doorway to discovering new things we might want to do and then you get into the FOMO situation FOMO situation, which is when you can't decide because you see these options. They're all perfectly good And it's sort of like well, what if I choose the wrong one? What if I don't get the best one? What if I don't have the best table at the restaurant? What if I don't choose the best thing on your menu and you know, what if I don't choose the best girl to go on the date with and that is It's really risk aversion at the end of the day We don't want to let go of what we can't have we want everything for ourselves it's like that baruch assault problem from charlie in the chocolate factory and and It's it's very bad and it it it it has huge Horrible effects on lives. I I you know have seen people in my lives Sorry in my life in my circle who you know dated somebody for like nine years and would never commit or that person who tried to juggle Job offers and push back and push back and eventually lost one of them And we have an example in the book about a guy who was delaying and delaying and trying to trade up And eventually the firm found out and they basically said like take it or leave it Right and so this is this is a huge expenditure of time energy and credibility with zero return And so especially in the business world you think about The the startup coming in with that basically has like no resources Why do they kill off the big companies? Because the big companies are stuck in indecision and analysis paralysis And it's so hard in an age where there's so much choice Big data gives us so much information that we have to try to parse through And so when I talk about fobo in the book There's a couple of things that are really critical to the solution The first thing is that we need to spend zero time on small decisions And so basically and I ended up I did a ted video called how to make faster decisions about this that That talks about the fact that in these little decisions in life Whether it's what to watch on netflix or what to get for lunch or those kinds of things I've been for the last 20 years doing something that has saved me so much time and energy and headaches That I recommend for small decisions or what I call no stakes decisions And these are things that are like, you know, again It's sort of like am I gonna have the chicken or the fish and I simply look down at my watch I assign one half of my watch to one option the other half of my watch to the other I look down see what the second hand is and then I let the watch decide It's the it's essentially like, you know rolling it out If you don't if you don't wear a watch you can look at your cell phone and do even or odd But essentially what you're doing is you're acknowledging the fact that this decision does not matter You will not remember it in a day or three days. It has no economic implications It has no life implications and therefore really the only implication is that you're wasting your valuable time when something doesn't matter And so you must take yourself the drama queen out of the equation and have an impartial Decider, which is you know your watcher or whatever that thing is for you now for small decisions What I call low stakes decisions. Those are things that require a bit more Knowledge and thought like maybe it's which printer should I buy or which cell phone plan should I get there? You you know, again, these are things that you probably won't struggle with But when you do you should not be struggling with them And so therefore in this situation you've got to set some basic criteria and outsource it to somebody who can make the decision for you And then when it comes to the big things the big things of life where you're feeling flobo It's like, you know, I have gotten into three graduate schools. Which one should I choose? I have gotten offers at four tech firms. Which one should I go to? I have you know, I've matched with nine girls on, you know, hinge, which one should I go out with, you know, and that's Where um, you want to spend the time to figure it out And so there what you do is you first of all need to change the way you're making decisions because here the It's not about maximization. Actually that that's not the actual problem here The problem is the way you're going about coming up with a maximum Maximized decision the optimal decision And so what you want to do is basically find a way to let go of what you can have because where you're getting stuck Is that you're not eliminating things you're going back around to the same set of options without eliminating any And that's what creates the pathology And so the decision-making process that I lay out in the book and it really it's kind of multi-step But it starts with setting criteria then doing due diligence So getting information gathering information so that you know What is the difference between perception and reality and then eliminating anything that doesn't fit your criteria and from that point You have a small set of options left You choose one front runner kind of one that your gut tells you could be the best one And then you compare each remaining Potential option one by one with that front runner and if it doesn't surpass the front runner and become the new front runner you remove it Permanently it is gone and what that does is it forces you to number one Each time choose the better so you can feel good about that You know, you're saying I'm getting the thing that I want But number two is the other option is gone forever. You're more recondoing your life You are getting rid of that thing and in doing so, you know, you say I'm glad that I have that option But it is gone and it's okay And you work down this until you get down to one thing and when you get to that final option Of course, you can feel good choosing it because as you know You have gone through the process you've done the work and if you're still sort of indecisive It's only because you're creating problems here because every option you have left is perfectly fine. That's the thing about fobo I'm not saying, you know, fobo isn't about choosing between terrible things It's choosing between acceptable things. And so you need to move past that and move on And I think the big thing that this helps with is the fact that Those tiny decisions, whether it's fish or chicken, they exhaust us Decision making we don't have endless amounts of willpower for So if we're spending a lot of time Trying to figure out what we're going to wear to work or what's the perfect outfit for the gym or what to eat at lunch We don't have that time for the bigger decisions And then ultimately the ones that cost the most the ones that have the biggest impact We aren't making good decisions on so guard that decision making process and keep yourself As famously as steve jobs did with what he was wearing Just isolate yourself from those No value decisions that tire you from the bigger decisions that you need to be making in your life by the way The steve jobs example is such a great one because For him what he wore every day wasn't a high-stakes decision It was a no-stakes decision. Now if you're anna winter, it's a high-stakes decision So every person will have their own sort of personal calculus You know, if you have a food allergy, then it does matter what you eat every day And so we have to think about those things, but as you very sort of Sagely pointed out a j like what happens when we do this number one. It's cognitive overload But number two is that um, you are actually Most likely Delaying and procrastinating from dealing with the things that truly matter in life It's like i'm going to spend the next five hours You know deciding which seat i'm going to have on the plane I can avoid dealing with the fact that like i don't like my job and so we need to You know be kind to ourselves and give ourselves the space To deal with the things that matter instead of just wasting our time on things that don't The thing that's interesting About figuring out for yourself. What is high stakes low stakes? No stakes It's you mentioned it's going to be different for other people And i've certainly been in a position where i've said to people, you know what go ahead and make that decision I don't really care and they look at you as what do you mean? You don't care this is attached to this and this is attached to that. Well, maybe for you it is But i love being able to offload certain decisions There's one that has made my life so incredibly easy And it's if i'm going to dinner with aj because i know that aj has already done the research He knows the the the best dishes that this chef makes and every time in the past that i have deviated From what he was getting i always found myself looking at his plate upset at my decision So now it's what whatever you're getting order two. I'm not even playing that game and one that Decision has made my life that much better of delegating that response. It's made your life better It's turned these low value no value decisions into low value decisions because now i'm impacting johnny's happiness But it has become a running joke that just give us one menu when we go out to eat Because we don't need to sit through two menus and many of us to your exact point Don't realize that the decision fatigue is leading to procrastination in other areas where the drain Is much more important on your earning potential your happiness Where you're living who your roommate is who you're dating You are procrastinating shoving that aside to figure out What's the perfect seamless web order out of the 7 000 restaurants available to you online? Not where we want to spend our time and this is a q&a episode So we have a couple listed questions here that uh, I believe you're going to have a lot of great advice for So this first one comes from neil. He says so excited to hear you're going to speak with patrick I hope this reaches you in time. I'm currently struggling with something that creates a planet-sized fomo for me It's a bit ironic because I think i'm dealing with a high-quality problem here I'm currently doing my master's degree. I'm not going to bore you with the details And I feel like i'm being pulled in three directions at once a post-grad program Starting my own business or getting a well-paid job that's already been offered to me I know I could succeed at all three of these options, but here's the problem Realistically, I can only pick one now I don't expect you to say take this option, but rather i'm looking at a way to take fomo out of my decision-making process Any suggestions you guys have very much appreciated? I think this goes in line with with what you were saying earlier But these major decisions and many times we are much like neil faced with three options We're picking between two Okay, the seconds on my watch that might help a little bit making a list asking some friends that might help But when all three feel really viable and so important to your career trajectory, how do you tackle that? So we're into the territory of fota Which is if you take fomo and fomo and add them together you get fota Which means fear of doing anything and in fact, what's funny about that is that in brazilian portuguese i lived in brazil It's fota means it's the f word and then everybody knows that show fota on netflix Which means chaos so it kind of works across the globe Now now neil. Okay. This is a great one though because we can solve your problem. So This is an area where I've seen tried and true results So the first thing to do is to think you know carefully about your criteria What is your criteria for the next period of your life? Do you want to maximize earnings? Do you want to maximize learning? Do you want to maximize? Experience do you want to maximize? You know sort of upside and each one of those paths can offer one of those things to you And then you need to think about that in the context of your own life, you know Are do you need to make money? You know, maybe that you just need to have salary, right? So there's a bunch of personal decision making there and we can set criteria around those and so You know in in the book I sort of sort of lay out some basic stuff But it's like, you know in terms of that perception you need to you need to figure out the perception versus the reality on each of Those issues so like can you even do it? Could you be successful? Do you even have a good idea? You know, could you even get into school like those sort of basic block and tackling around each of the potential opportunities that we're looking at And you need to in doing so you gather information that demystifies replaces fear or anxiety with facts and allows you to make a better decision And as you do that more and more you start to see that there'll be differences between them And some of them will will will map better to the criteria that you set So that's really important to do that prep work Now say you're able to eliminate one of them and you get down to two at that point You're going to start thinking more critically and continue your research and and and you're going to go out into the world and talk to people So what's important here is this is not a google exercise Like nobody solved a true problem by just googling it unless it's like something like how do I you know? Boil an egg because that's what I do when I want to cook something But here you want to get out and you know visit the school or talk to other entrepreneurs or You know meet with companies and then figure out. Can I even actually generate this option now when you get down to it at the end? Um Let's assume that you settle on one of them based on that research and you start narrowing down right at that point If you are sort of on the fence, but you think you figured it out Go ahead and choose the one that your intuition is telling you to do because at that point you have removed the fear and Replaced it with facts now the beauty here is you mentioned in your question You know that you can only choose one but i'm gonna i'm gonna push back on that and say you can have one and ten percent 110 percent why is that well my first book was called the ten percent entrepreneur? It's basically about how you can be an entrepreneur without quitting your day job Um in the new book I talk about how we can use our fomo to explore new passions And we can do what I call going all in some of the time now What does that mean it means for example that if you choose the job In your free time you work on an entrepreneurial venture or you take some classes and start on that degree And so the idea is even if you make one choice and you choose one thing You can always flexibly do the other things right if you become an entrepreneur full time Maybe you can take some classes in the evening But the beauty of doing that is you know, you don't know if you want to be an entrepreneur You don't even know if you even like it and so it makes sense to me that you choose probably You know, let's like actually give you a real example here a real a real solution to your problem I would choose the school or the job and I would do the entrepreneurial venture part time To figure out if you have a good idea if you even like it And if you can succeed and if you figure that out that you can then you can increase your time over You know over over a period of time maybe go full time, but to me that's the one that has the most Perception bias built into it the most uncertainty And so that's the one that's the best candidate to start on a on a part-time basis and then Incrementally do more and more as you realize you can succeed or if you like it I completely agree and I feel like it is a complete misnomer that it is truly three choices I think entrepreneurship And everyone that I know that started a business did not wipe the slate clean of all other options and say I am now an entrepreneur Every entrepreneur that I know was hedging bets and entrepreneurship is all about taking calculated risks And what he's creating is a false choice And a whole lot of extra risk that doesn't need to be there because to your exact point Whether it's a post-grad program or a full-time job There is still going to be hour and space and time for you to pursue entrepreneurship And I talk about this with a lot of my coaching clients whether they are thinking about a business when they're taking the boot camp Or in our one-on-one sessions Around how exactly we started the art of charm and the art of charm was started when I was in graduate school because I understood that well if I keep scratching this passion itch Outside and it hits and it becomes something that I want to do I can always leave the post-grad program I could always leave the job and I'm hedging my bets to create an opportunity for myself If that original choice that I made wasn't the right one for me And I think too often when we think about entrepreneurship And what we hear and see sensationalize on the media is that it is this clear distinct choice that I knew This was my path and I jumped in fully And I think a lot of that of course is after all the battles are won and we think back to our experience We equate it as being a full 110 decision But in actuality many if not all of the successful entrepreneurs that I know and I interact with Started something as that side And it just kept growing until they couldn't say no And they said no to their job. No to the post-doc degree And I think that's that's so key that you realize you could give 110 percent You could provide that space for that other opportunity and decision and not rule it out completely There is a whole industry we talked about marketing and FOMO earlier. There's a whole industry that's out there to convince people That you know entrepreneurship is like the the this like it's like running in a field with like the wind blowing through your hair, right? And and I'll tell you and the So I wrote this book to 10 percent entrepreneur because I was not an entrepreneur at all I worked on wall street. I was caught up in the 2008 financial crisis I you know, I worked at AIG my stock fell 97 percent I ended up having like a health breakdown And I just said like I'm never going to work for some company again Where some person I've never met presses the wrong button and I lose everything So then I was like, let me be an entrepreneur. Well, I looked at my friends, right? And I'm like, look at my friends and they're like, you're crazy, man Like you think going through the AIG implosion is bad like wait till you're working for a company and you can't even pay You know the bills and so that's why I started incrementally because I realized that my risk tolerance wasn't high enough And I think what happens with a lot of entrepreneurs is they do start out incrementally But when they succeed, you know, everybody wants to tell that story about how they got down to their last credit card And live with mom and dad and they had nothing and now they're you know, ilan musk and why do they do that? Because it's the hero's journey But I rather be a real hero and do it sustainably and start part time and then just get there and I think that's it's so pragmatic and I think you know, it's such a service to teach people that mindset because Especially right now you're gonna have to be creative to make it through this this pandemic and Partial or sort of a part-time entrepreneurship is an amazing way to spend your your quarantine figuring out how you can start a business Right now, but do it in a way that makes sense And also bringing on partners and and not just relying solely on your own I mean if entrepreneurship is some itch that you want to scratch Talk to a couple buddies and offload some of the work so that you're all pitching in together You know the art of charm was started by some buddies coming together and saying let's do this together It would have been a lot more daunting to do it completely 100 on my own And I think again to your point when we look back and we listen to our heroes Well, yeah, they're they're playing around with the history a little bit because they know that that hero's journey is going to get them The 2020 interview it's going to get them the book deal So of course they want to paint that narrative that I struggled through this and it was a monumental decision that I faced But in actuality most successful entrepreneurs are calculated risk takers And you can be a calculated risk taker when you're working full time for someone else and the other thing That if you are responsible with your time and as you get older you tend to figure out how to do that When you're younger, it's a little bit more difficult But even an hour a day dedicated to learning a skill is going to get you quite far and I guess it's quite difficult for young people to realize that as you get older You're like, oh, I can fudge some things around I can take up this this new hobby but you and You have all the resources to to learn whatever you want to learn right in front of you now So take use that opportunity to have some fun. Yeah when people tell me they're too busy I always just say, you know, okay fine show me your phone How long have you been on social media this week? Right because in the minute I got my first like good phone, you know, smartphone I never had any free time anymore because like every you're walking down the street You're listening to podcasts, which is you know, you're on the news or this and that we all can make time For these kinds of things if we cut out stuff that isn't adding any value to our lives And for those of you who are struggling with time Set your alarm clock 30 minutes earlier What I found is that many of us view ourselves as night owls and view ourselves as productive at night But if you take that 30 minutes from the evening and put it to the morning You're going to find the productivity necessary to do the side hustle to do these things To learn the stuff that johnny was talking about now jason has a dating related question And of course once again fomos creeping up Now that countries are opening up again and online dating is a thing. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed There seem to be more options than ever of course under quarantine Everyone fired up online dating because we couldn't meet in person And I just came back from a date and during it I was thinking well, this is nice But maybe I should have gone out with someone else who matched me And I couldn't even enjoy the date that much because I was thinking about my other options Any advice jason That is the modern experience in one question, isn't it? I mean it is Jason likely lives in new york city Or la He doesn't live in rural main where I grew up Because if he did he probably would have not many options. So Listen, I think that the big Sort of important thing to start with and you've done it right there already jason is yourself aware You're thinking carefully about about sort of the motivations and and going back to the original definition of fomo perception, right? So is it true? First of all that, you know, there's all these other yeah There are other people can swipe with but if you had a good time with somebody Like how many think back to like the last 10 dates you went on like how many of them Were as enjoyable did you make as good a connection as the one you made right now? And so that gives you a sense of whether you are truly being honest for yourself about how charming you are I mean you've been listening to this podcast. You probably are but still And then think about you know the motivation is the motivation coming from the outside because this app exists Or is it just because you truly feel like you know what? She's not the one I should keep going out with other other girls But I think this is a great time to reset on that kind of stuff If your true goal is to get into a relationship Then you know going out with everybody you match with no matter who they are and just I see this like I you know I have a good friend who he would just sit there and like just swipe right for like an hour Just and then he probably then he'd go back later and try to look through them And I was like I just there's no intentionality in that kind of behavior. So I would say Jason at the end of the day Look at the data Look at your track record and then use that to make an intentional set of decisions rather than simply just You know living in the clouds with this perception Yeah, your your point earlier about facts over feelings and really thinking about What has lit you up from your exes and the other people that you dated what what drew you to them What were the qualities that you really enjoyed and I feel like When we have decision overload and we have so many options If we are not intentional and clear on what is an absolute no a red flag a deal breaker not interested Then we let in everything and much like Jason We're going to be going on endless first dates some of which are going to be fun because new is exciting Our brain is wired to enjoy new It's wired to enjoy first dates because everyone gets dressed up and puts on their best and and has their perfect stories And they get to pitch themselves to others But unless you're really clear and this is what we do with all of our program participants If understanding what are your core values and what do you want in a partner? You're not going to be able to choose off of that cheesecake factory menu The device the apps are designed to make everyone look more attractive and like a better option Why because they crave our attention? That's why they time the notifications They allow us to message at certain times They show you that beautiful person when you log into the app first to get you coming back So if you're not clear in what it is intentionally that you want out of a relationship You're going to be on a series of first dates Some of which are going to be completely regrettable in a time waster when you could have been Starting that side hustle and going 110 as an entrepreneur I want to add to that as well You're really not going to have the opportunity to get to know somebody if you're not willing to Commit and allow the other person to feel safe in the relationship If you're not willing to commit well, then they're not going to commit and both parties will be guarded You'll never truly get to know each other And it'll be a very superficial Fling and if that's what you're interested in that's fine. But from his question here It sounds like he's hoping to get more of that All right, Marta has a question about time management Been a podcast listener for two years. Thank you for the great advice and exercises My question as a young mom of a three and five year old and recently starting a part-time job Luckily, I get to work from home is I struggle with making time for self-development I know this is important for me and at the same time I just can't seem to find the time needed unless I start getting up an hour earlier But trust me. I'm not going to get enough sleep as it is. Do you have any tips for me in a time crunch? So that is a challenge that that is very understandable and Marta. I love it. You're focusing on Developing yourself, which is pretty awesome. Even though you have all these other things going on in your life You're still making time for that. So number one is I think you got to be kind to yourself. So Putting pressure on yourself to to sort of achieve certain things in a certain amount of time when you have a lot of external pressure And especially right now where everybody's under pressure I always like to think your best friend is you and so be nice to yourself because you know, no matter where you go You're with you But but I think in terms of your objective So here's one thing that I think carefully about and it's um It's it goes back to this concept of going all in some of the time So I'm a big believer in when you're trying to add Expertise or new skills think about what you already do well and add alongside of those things So for example, you know, I have a certain side of things I do well, but like I'm terrible at basketball I'm five seven. There's no chance for me to you know You can get close to the rim and so I just gave that up But I spend my time building skills in areas that are adjacent to the things. I'm already good at now Why do I do that? I do that Because my chance of success in my efficiency in acquiring those new skills is so much higher And so as you think about that, you know, you may say listen, okay, Patrick No, I really want to do this one very random thing that's way outside of my comfort zone And that's certainly up to you and you can certainly, you know go after that But I'd encourage you to start by doing things that are close to what you do Well and that you can do in small increments So can you do it in a multitasking way? Can you, you know, listen to a podcast about the thing you're trying to learn while you're folding laundry? Can you do it while you're cooking dinner or walking to work? And as you do that and you create habits and you work it into your day in a sustainable way That's where you win. That's where you make the gains because the end of the day You know creating habits is really hard to do and making a bunch of new habits at the same time It's really tough but changing your mindset and having kind of a growth mindset is something that will allow you to do all kinds of great things And so I think that's kind of the way to tackle your challenge I think many of us Aren't good judges of where we spend our time much like we're not good at self-reflection on what we eat during the day And whether you're trying to lose weight or gain back time. I highly recommend Journaling everything you put in your body everything you spend time on during the day I would set a timer on your phone to ding every 15 minutes and you just jot down. I'm doing this I'm doing that. I'm doing this and after a few days you go back through And you're going to realize that there are just things that you are doing that are time sinks time sucks based on bad habits and bad routines And a little bit of disorganization that you could win back five minutes 10 minutes 15 minutes here Over a week over two weeks over a month. That's hours of time Now, of course right now where you sit looking at your schedule. You're like a jay hours of time. I don't have hours of time That's insane But there are leaks in your time management that you are unaware of what gets tracked gets changed And it's an exercise I do with all of my coaching clients around habit building and routines because if you don't know What those triggers are during your day If you don't know that you know what I end up spending 30 minutes trying to decide what I'm going to cook for lunch because I didn't take the time the five minutes in the morning to Just commit to something Well, that's a time sink. You didn't realize that because in the moment you're not like, oh, this is really a waste of time You're like, I got to figure out what I want to eat And that's why having an opportunity to just write it down And I've done this myself to try to map out my ideal day And map out where my time sinks are as an entrepreneur and how I could be more in my zone of genius and less in my Monkey do this same repetitive motion over and over again And there are also opportunities then once you've mapped out your day To go to your spouse and say, you know what this is really important to me This is something that I just can't seem to find the time for I did AJ's journaling exercise. I'm not seeing any time leaks And say can you help support me create space in my life for something? That's so important to me And you might be surprised that your spouse will be so over the moon happy To load the dishwasher to change the diapers to pre-make a bunch of meals and take that off your plate So you can finish that book so you can pick up that hobby so you can launch that business But if you aren't clear on where you are truly spending your time It's going to be very easy for you to say I don't have the time AJ Patrick Johnny I just I can't manage it. It's it doesn't seem like it exists And the power of compounding when it comes to knowledge when it comes to investments and when it comes to time You'd be amazed at over a month how you can find those time sinks and turn them into opportunities for your development In addition to that, I think an interesting practice that that is worth considering So you've made that time and I think your your advice about journaling time Is is incredibly well thought out and then you actually have to then remember to okay You've got the time now. How do I do it? How do I commit? How do I achieve something? And one thing that's really been powerful for me about a year and a half ago I was I really wanted to start meditating every day and I just couldn't I couldn't do it I just like I never did it I would you know, let's do it for a couple days and then I'd fall off and not do it And so a friend and I decided to basically Have an accountability pack and we every day would go on this just app called habit share Nothing fancy But we would go in and we check in every day that we did our meditation and we had a shared goal And we had rules around it and number one were both super competitive and number two is that we would help each other out so I was on vacation in paris and I got I missed three days and he wrote back and he was like red wine is not a replacement And it was such a great little nudge that helped me out And so if you can find somebody who has similar goals as you That can also help you to to stay on path and use that time intentionally and do that thing You said you wanted to do and you can help them do the same It's incredibly helpful and I think along exactly that same thing for me meditation was a struggle And I made it the first thing I do in the morning Because we have routines built up already And if you can piggyback to your point off of those habits and routines you're already doing You're more likely to create that habit you're looking for But if you try to put it in your messy disorganized day and hope that you'll find the time later Well, yeah, the excuses kick in and you don't find the time So if I've identified that there's one thing that's really important to you and meditation became really important to me Based on some stress management health issues It became a non-negotiable first thing that I do in the morning And it wasn't something that I had to oh, I didn't meditate today Oh, I didn't get to it and then all of a sudden I felt just dejected with myself You prioritize and put things place them strategically in the routine You're already doing and you're going to find the time Something else that we've talked about on the show is to define what your core values are and prioritize them in your schedule So that you are engaging in them so that you can Fill fulfilled at the end of the day and know what you're doing And this comes into play With the last acronym that we have not had an opportunity to talk about But because once those core values are defined You know what you're doing that day and most importantly You know what you're not doing and therefore you may celebrate And and feel good about the joy of missing out So the joy of missing out is a term that has become very popular on the internet and It's not mine. I did not invent that one. So But I like it and but I have a lot of feelings about it. Let me tell you why I think of the joy of missing out kind of like, you know, joe moe I think of it as kind of like french Polynesia Like it's paradise But you have to find a way to get there and simply saying French Polynesia a bunch of times a day doesn't mean that you're actually there And that's what I think is what happens on social media. You see people Posting on facebook or telling you, you know, even conversations about their joe moe for this and joe moe for that And I always think to myself number one is, you know, okay, fine If you have so much joe moe like why are you telling me about it? Like it's it's if you had true joe moe you wouldn't even need to tell me about it And so I think that that it serves as a very helpful map of where we want to go It's really the buddhist concept of detachment at the end of the day. I mean we always forget, you know Meditation and and all these concepts even in a proto agrarian society way back along at a time of buddha People had stress and longing and fear and they had to deal with it in different ways And so I think that's a really important thing to remember is these things are part of the human experience Although now we have all these new ways of expressing them given our modern society and the difference in In how we live our lives The other thing about joe moe is I think joe moe works really well For the little things, you know, joe moe about that party or that weekend away Doesn't work so well with things like, you know, I never heard anybody say like I have joe moe at not having kids or I have joe moe at like never, you know, figuring out what I wanted to do for for my career and so um, and so that's why I I sort of I I I I like the term because it's kind of fun But I think that it's got some, you know, major flaws Well, I think in order to be able to truly experience joe moe There needs to be focus on what's important and what allows you to feel good So if you're able to focus on that one thing As to blinders to everything else well, the joe moe is is glorious because you are You are immersed in the thing that brings you the most joy So there is joy There's a joy of what you're focused on and the joy of what you're what you've been able to block out Yeah, I totally agree. I wonder how many people are experiencing joe moe right now with quarantine Many of us had hoped that we wouldn't be experiencing fomo and I don't think we'd label this time spent as joe moe either I think to your point. These are good guides To help us good compass to work from But they don't always get us where we want to go and I think that's really important to understand Yeah, I I never use the word joe moe during quarantine because it's hard to feel a lot of joy right now But I do think back to 2008 when you know, my career was so Impacted and I had all this stress and I really went through a tough time for a couple years And I look at now with the decisions that I made and the diversification and Meditation all these sorts of things that I learned this post traumatic growth that came out of that And I felt pretty good this whole time and so for me it's been more about This whole experience for me and I hope many others, but I'm sure you know a lot of struggling But it's sort of like okay You're being forced To take a measure of who you are and so are you going to rise to the occasion or aren't you and and I think You know we if we ask ourselves that question then we can actually take the action to rise So johnny and I wanted to give you an opportunity to launch a new acronym Uh on this show as a platform that we could all hashtag and celebrate on social media So what is the latest four-letter acronym that you're working on the one that still I think is real And is gaining some currency, but I want to make sure that everybody You know we use it in a smart way as fogo fear of going out because It is something that like every week of this quarantine I felt different about my life and about the world around me. It's crazy like and I was just reading Have you guys read a man's search for meaning by dr. Franco? So so that book is super beautiful and super profound and he talks about that He lived in a concentration camp and his experience that informed his the way to the world and he said A day in a concentration camp felt like an eternity a week felt like it passed in a minute Which is really interesting and I think we can feel that way, right? It's like the days are long and the weeks just fly by when you look back and so Now we're thinking about going outside and people are fearful And it will not everybody some people seem to not be fearful at all But many people older people are fearful our parents are fearful people who knew somebody who was severely impacted or fearful And so we're starting to see that we're having A lot of people that are that they go outside of their homes I see this in new york city and they they're don't want to they don't want to go into a store even with a face mask on And so I think we're going to have to all Transition to this next stage of whatever our society looks like but the fogo You know the reason why I think it's such an important term It's not just a kind of a funny thing the reason why I think it's kind of meaningful is because remember We don't say it out loud when we say fogo, but the first word is fear and fear Is not helping us and so when we when we when we call it out when we recognize what's happening And then we say okay you you have a fear of going out. Let's look at the facts Let's look at what's you know comfortable for you. Let's be like sensitive to that Because everybody's in their own place and so we should respect if you're afraid like who am I to shame you for that? It's okay that you're afraid but but at the same time we should all be helping each other to feel comfortable That's why I think it's such an important term and why I Bid all of you to use it in good health Because I think we're going to be hearing it a lot in the next months Well, thank you for sharing that with us and johnny and I are going to be reaching out to you And we have some decision fatigue and we're struggling with fomo ourselves Offloading it We love every week to give our listeners a challenge that they could use in their life to see results Do you have a simple challenge that you'd like to share with our audience? Yeah, here's what I want you to do so I realized in writing this book that North of 80 of people sleep with their phone by their bed And among millennials, it's like 90 And why do we do that? Like why do we have our phone by our bed? Well? Big reason is because of the alarm clock. Okay, that's the Trojan horse That's how the Trojans get into the city and create a lot of damage And I used to be that person But I moved my phone into my kitchen and I bought actually I use Alexa for my alarm clock But you can just buy an alarm clock And I you know, it's like Alexa wake me up at 7 30. Oh, she's gonna talk right now. Um, she's in the room You hear that yeah So anyway, um I I leave it in the in the kitchen But there's a kind of a fun way to do this and I got this I was at Thrive global and Ariana Huffington's team gave me a phone bed And you actually put your phone in this bed and you you put it to bed at night Alexa stop Should I record this or keep going? Okay, um so she gave me this phone bed and I use it now and basically you tuck it in at night You go to bed and then you both wake up in the morning and recharge And so that's what I want people to do I want you to get your phone out of the bedroom because you know what happens FOMO causes us to look at our phones It causes us to pick it up in the middle of the night and check the news of the email or the text or the whatever And it is you know to overcome FOMO we must choose what we actually want But we must miss out on the rest right fear of missing out and when you have your phone tied to you You cannot miss out. It's so unhealthy. And so that my friends is my challenge for you I love it. Thank you. I also went analog alarm clock And now I use this news button for that meditation time and it's working out perfectly So thank you for that challenge. Thank you so much for joining us Patrick Where can our audience find more about FOMO and all of your amazing Acronyms that we've shared with us today You can check out my website, which is patrickmagenis.com. I also have a podcast called FOMO sapiens Which is distributed by harvard business review and it's it's a basically show about Entrepreneurial thinkers how they make decisions people like andre yang have come on the show and a lot a lot of types of folks That you guys talk to here So I think you know it's a show you'll enjoy and then you can find me on instagram and patrick mcginnis at twitter at pj mcginnis and You know i'm on all the socials you can link from my website So check it out and um if you go to the site you can actually download a chapter of the book for free And see if you like it and if you like it it's on amazon You're missing out practical decision-making in a world of overwhelming choice