Businessweek Extra - Patrick McGinnis

week we caught up with a venture capitalist. His name is Patrick McGinnis, but you don't know him as a venture capitalist, and you probably haven't heard his name, but I guarantee you you've heard of something he came up with, FOMO Fear of missing Out, absolutely FOMO and also FOMO now Fear of Better Options. He's also got a new book out, Jason. It's called Fear of Missing Out, Practical

decision Making in a world of overwhelming choice. And what's interesting is he really applies it to our COVID nineteen world, something to think about as we are all sheltering in place. So basically, this book is a reflection of where we are today as a society, how we spend our time. And I met in FOMO when I was back in business school at Harvard Business School in the year two thousand and three, before there was any social media. But now we're in a place where all of us are

living with fomo. We were inundating with information and social media and all these influences, and so we have to find a way to deal with it. Alright, So can we go back to that first thing. I can't skip past that because I mentioned this to my two teenagers that I was going to interview you today and that you're the inventor of fomo, and they're like, we want to hear more about this. So on behalf of Will and Henry. I am asking this question, how did you

how did you come up with this? What was the what was the germ of the idea here? Yeah, so listen. I I grew up a small town in Maine and it's a very calm place, not like going on. And then I lived in New York, but I was working all the time, so I didn't have time pomo. And then right before I went to business school, there were two things that happened in here in New York City

that really affected me. Number one was I was working in venture capital in two thousand and so everything blew up and we basically lost all our money and it was very traumatic. But far worse than that was I lived through nine eleven. I lived in more in Manhattan, and we all remember what that was like. And so as a result, I just wanted to live life to

the fullest. Was carpet a d M for me. And when I got to HBS, you know, it's such a choice rich environment in terms of the amounts of classes and job opportunities and parties and trips and and all of these things were happening, and I just wanted to do all of them. And even though I didn't there was no social media. In fact, Marcu Zuckerberg was across the river working on the first version of Facebook at the exact same time that I was over in business school.

Even though we didn't have social media, we all lived in such close product proximity to each other and we could compare ourselves to each other that I basically felt this anxiety that I was never doing enough and I couldn't keep up. And I started calling that if you were missing out. I shortened it to fomo, and I wrote an article in our school newspaper called social Theory at HBS Beginnesses, two foes, and I talked all about fomo and its culture in our campus wow, and it

went viral. Well, you know, it's funny. I have to thank you guys, because it went viral on campus, and then I graduated and forgot about it. But Bloomberg Business Week magazine wrote about it in two thousand and seven in the context of HBS. That's the first time I saw it outside of when I wrote about it. And then slowly it's sort of crept into the vocabulary because you know, every year kids were graduating from business schools and bringing it to all of the firms that they

went to work for. Yeah, all right, well, good, well, we're happy to be a footnote in the creation and Patrick, you're welcome. But it's but it's such a big thing, right. We talked about this like just trying to have balance and just being present, enjoying where you are rather than

thinking about what you're missing. And so how do you get to this in a world where like everybody's having a hard time about what they're missing right now, you know, or what they're going to be missing on the other side of this, because we can't go back to life as we knew it. It's so true. And listen, it's been interesting because in the beginning of the pandemic, we all felt, I think a sense of relief that we didn't have that social pressure. And you know, it goes

beyond social pressure. Also is about how we spend our money and how we invest our money. It has all these other implications. But for that one moment, I remember thinking, oh my god, I haven't had fomo in two weeks. And then over time, as we started to sort of realize this is going to drag on, I think we all started to feel it. And the big thing to remember with fomo is that fomo is caused by two things. Number One, it's the perception that something better is out

there happening than what you're doing at the moment. So perception can be deception. You have to really dig into whether something is as good as it looks on the surface. And the second is it's about her behavior following the crowd. So when you feel fomo, asked yourself, is this something I truly want to do because it's something I want to do? Or am I feeling pressure to sort of keep up with the jones as an external pressure on me?

Can I just say, what's really interesting is and and maybe this is all of a sudden like everybody doing zooms, and you know there's tons of now fitness Zoom classes when initially there wasn't a lot of things to choose from. Right, everybody was ramping up, and I kind of loved it because the world became so simple and there weren't a ton of things I had to make decisions. And now it's like do I want to do this Zoom business class or this one? Do I want to do this

Zoom family meeting or this one? Like it's it's unbelievable, how you know, again, fomo hits even in this world. That's the thing that kind of blown my mind about this is what has happened. Is we so we you know, we all stay home. But the thing that provokes much of our fomo, which is you know, connectivity and our cell phones and social media. We're actually on it more now than we were before. My screen time and I'm

careful about this. Look at your screen time, everybody, Like it's frightening how much spending on our devices, right, and so we're just we're getting into actually kind of a worse place than we were before. I would say, let's continue our conversation with Patrick McGinnis. He's got a new book out. It's called Fear of Missing out practical decision making in a world of overwhelming choice. Johnnys on the

phone on launch day. As Carol mentioned, he's got a big event tonight virtual of course, because that's the world we're living in. And Patrick, first of all, thanks for sticking with us. And I have to ask you. You know, we were starting in the first part of our conversation to get into this notion of sort of how the world has changed and how FOMO still is creeping into what we're doing. What is the effect of sort of how we think about missing out or you also talk

about FOBO fear of a better option. How do we think about that differently? Do you think on the other side of this as we get to what some people are calling sort of the next normal. Yeah, it's a really important question because I think we have a lot to learn in this moment, and if we pay attention and put down our phones for a minute and think about what's going on, we can come out of this

actually better people, better society. And so I would think on the FOMO side, it's really about paying attention right now to what you truly miss and what you realize you don't really miss. Writing that down actually and then when you re emerge into the real world, remembering these things like it's incredible the little things I miss. I live in New York City. I missed the subway, I miss going to a lot of the rest ran into

the neighborhood. What I don't miss is over scheduling myself or being stressed out about some of the things that don't really matter. So I think thinking about that right now and being introspective about that helpful phobo, which is a fear of a better option. This is the other thing that I wrote about back in business school, but

it never got famous. But it's just as bad, I would say, worse than fomo because phobo is about never sort of accepting a deal, always wanting to trade up, always wanting to wait for something better to come along. And I think that we've seen in this pandemic that the people who were waiting for something better to come along when it came to making the hard decisions about closing down and social distancing, uh, they found out very

quickly that delaying decision making actually has terrible effects. I totally agree with that. I think that's such an interesting insight. Right the amount of time like you stew over making a decision. Sometimes you just gotta just do it and move on totally. I mean this, this is a great example in public policy with whether it's COVID or it's

or it's Brexit. But it's also if you think about you know, entrepreneurs versus incoming companies, these traditional companies that they have all this money and resources, but they can't move quickly. And the reason why you know, the auties get eaten up by the teslas is because the startups have to move. They don't have the resources just to

sit around and weave for something better. Yeah. Well, and there's it also feels like many folks are gaining a sense of clarity to your earlier point about fomo, about sort of what they need and what they don't need.

But also when a lot is stripped away, maybe you stop thinking, well, I'm going to do this thing next, and I'm really just doing this until I get a chance to do X. And there's also this sense it feels like right now Patrick that you know, we're all much more aware of our mortality in in some ways, and and maybe saying either Okay, I'm gonna make that decision to do something different, or maybe I need to sort of reassess and and really be honest about how

I'm feeling about this situation right now and not always be a grass is greener sort of person. Now, for sure, the reality is that we are having this opportunity, but just with as what we lived within nine eleven, there was this period of introspection and then we sort of resume these sorts of yeas that we wish we hadn't done. And so I actually suspect that there will be a wave of a massive fomo when we are able to

live our lives again. And I think it's okay for a little while, because when you have fomo means there something to miss out on, because that's a good thing. But we we definitely want to be conscious of what we've learned right now because you know, if we learn something and pay attention, we can just live much more decisive lives. How do you apply fomo in the workplace? Oh, it's a very anybody been on LinkedIn lately and seeing all of your friends with their promotions and you start

to feel like you're just not good enough. I mean that is that is an incredibly sort of active use case.

But really I think about fomo in terms of not only in terms of not being sort of grateful or thankful for what you do have and then more fixating on what you don't have, but all so in terms of running businesses, when businesses start to do things because of fomo, when Pepsi brings Crystal Pepsi on the market because they want to keep up with sprite, when you're doing things for the wrong reasons because you're following in

the crowd, you are apt to make mistakes. And so how do you think We've been asking sort of big thinkers that this question, like, what are the underappreciated ways that you think we change as either humans or business people investors On the other side of this, so, I have a feeling, um that it's unfortunate that this whole

sort of situation has become quite political. And I think that we're going to see through the rest of the year that the political divide that is created by this is going to play out in our election, and then we're going to see effects on the election and potentially with voting and voting rights and things like that. And so I think the big question that I asked myself as I look at this pandemic. Is what is the

role that it will have in effect our democracy? And how can we as citizens come together to actually defend something that's so precious to us. And I think that's going to be the conversation this year. Right now, we're all dealing with the medical emergency. Next we'll be dealing with the economic impact, and we're gonna be dealing with the impact to our democratic systems. And that was venture capitalist and author Patrick McGinnis, inventor of the term fomo.

I have to say I was skeptical going in as where my son's but then when he made the case, like, okay, that checks out. I mean, fascinating to understand where it came from and also how it applies to the life that we're living right now. And can we just say, you gotta love that he gave props to Bloomberg business Week. Be Yes, they wrote about him years ago when he

created the term fomo. He wrote about it, he wrote an article while he was at Harvard Business School, and apparently Business Week picked it up and that really gave him a lot of attention. So good A love that, Yeah, good for him. It all comes together, all right, you've been listening to Bloomberg Business Week Extra, be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Radio Live Money through Friday, starting at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio.

I'm Jason Kelly and I'm Carol Masser, And this is Bloomberg h