Show notes
Patrick J. McGinnis coined the term “FOMO", short for the "Fear Of Missing Out.” He is the author of Fear of Missing Out: Practical Decision-Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice and host of HBR Presents: FOMO Sapiens podcast. He also created the term "FOBO" or "Fear Of a Better Option." At a time when every decision counts, we must be decisive. Deciding what’s best, whether you’re dealing with life’s major decisions or its minor details can be daunting. Patrick delivered a popular TED Talk on decision-making and developed a fresh approach that will show us how to overcome indecision...the topic for this conversation.
- When people ask Patrick what he does how does he like to reply?
- What’s the source of FOMO… the actual upstream source?
- 50 percent of us suffer from FOMO. What is the question that is framed to participants to know?
- How do we know it’s our FOMO speaking and not another part of our subconscious?
- Is there an argument for filtering what we choose to listen to or hear from others?
- What are the positives of FOMO?
- Does FOMO drive us to live out other peoples dreams instead of focusing with intention on our own dreams?
- What is our fear telling us?
- Has swipe left/right/up/down become a means to introduce FOBO and reinforce that behaviour?
- Why do leaders struggle to make important, difficult decisions in the workplace?
- Why should we Marie Kondo on the options we don’t take up?
- Patrick woke up and dressed like a French assassin. Did he take on the values of a French assassin alter ego?
- Patrick said his Dad was a man who knew no FOMO. Why?
- When Patrick's identity was wrapped in private equity he got very sick. How did he adjust his identity to move on?
- "I am the FOMO guy yet I have FOMO now?" Does Patrick ever have to self course correct?
- The opposite feeling of FOMO is where you feel joyful at the idea of not being involved. It's called "JOMO.”
- Should we consider Steven Pressfield's The War of Art and frame JOMO as the joy of beating the resistance?
- One of your favourite passages is from Martin Luther King's letter From the Birmingham Jail. What would his letter say?



