Firm Management
FOMO
At different moments in our lives, are attention is drawn to different things. Maybe we are excited for spring to turn into summer. Or perhaps we are eager or anxious about graduating from college. Or as we get older, nervous about our upcoming ...
Jun. 11, 2021
At different moments in our lives, are attention is drawn to different things. Maybe we are excited for spring to turn into summer. Or perhaps we are eager or anxious about graduating from college. Or as we get older, nervous about our upcoming wedding. No matter what is happening in our lives we are directly impacted by it. After surviving 2020 and early 2021, we were all living in a short term, focused life, just trying to get through another crazy day.
Now, as we move into the second half of 2021, we can actually take a moment to pause and begin to reflect on where we go next. What do you want to achieve in the end of 2021 and beyond. Now that you have the option to think ahead where do you want to go? Where do you want to help lead others around you to go?
As we have talked about before, success in moving forward is all about knowing where you are going. That is why now is a great time to reflect back on a millennial mind trait and use that to get us excited about thinking about the future. Here we are talking about FOMO (fear of missing out), that dreaded millennial abbreviation you have probably heard about before and rolled your eyes, it is okay to admit.
The term FOMO was created back in 2004 by Patrick J. McGinnis in an op-ed he published. His original article focused on social life at the Harvard Business School. The idea is that we feel fear or anxiety about missing out on something else. If we pick A, we can’t pick B. If we pick the red pill, we can’t pick the blue bill. While this term is generally viewed as a negative trait for millennials, the one positive aspect, it causes them as a generation to make decisions quicker and more often than others. That ability to make quick decisions is what we want to focus on as we plan for the future.
Moving Forward
Don’t dwell on the fear of missing out on anything and certainly don’t dwell on the fear that doing anything differently is bad as well. Charting your own path to success is all about taking steps to change, to improve, to do more than you did the day before. Your success moving forward will forever be tied to this concept. This is the lesson we are taking today from the millennial mind, the constant push and desire for change. Just like anything, moderation is the key to success. You don’t need to have FOMO over moving to Malaysia, sell all your possessions, quit your job and live in the middle of nowhere in a yurt. What you can do, is improve.
Growth
Grab a note pad, virtually or physically, and write down 5 things you would like to change at work. Come on we all have at least 5 things on our list. As you write out this list, these do not have to be major changes, they can be small little things. Something as simple as reach out to one client a week via phone instead of email. Or for the next project you complete for a client, get paid before the work goes out the door and not after. We all have a long list of changes we would like to see happen, we get caught up in the busyness of each season or year and just go through the motions. That is why now is a great time as we re-adjust to post covid to think about what we have been missing out on.
- Did we feel the pain the past year of an ever-growing account receivable as we only get paid months after we complete projects?
- Did we have to go into the office once a month to print checks to pay our vendors?
- Or did we put off making that obviously needed change at the organization, because we put it off another year?
If you want to go back to how things were pre-covid, your path is easy, just don’t do anything different. However, if you are looking to have a future, a career, and others to work with, then now is the time to make change happen. Have some healthy fear of missing out and starting tomorrow pick one thing, even if small and make a change happen. Maybe after all that change you have been avoiding all those years is for the best.