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FOMO is one of those topics that I think is ever so germane and if anything during the time of the pandemic it's become

even more prevalent.

So what exactly is FOMO and why is it worth even giving a talk on?

FOMO is... giving a talk on.

FOMO is, like the better words,

the ongoing concern that others are having a better time

than we are, that others are having rewarding experiences from which we're absent.

It's a kind of adult version of the same pain we feel in fourth or fifth grade when we find out that somebody's had a birthday party and they haven't invited us.

And we feel that throughout the course of our life, don't we?

When we see images of friends gathering or we hear that someone in an extended social circle has thrown a barbecue and the word didn't get to us.

It's that sense of not being in the inner circle.

Originally it was popularized in 2004, so it's not really a very old acronym. It's been only around for about 17 years. It started out in a satirical piece by a Harvard business magazine writer

named Patrick McGinnis who focused on FOMO

as being the concern that other people have more information that we than we do.

It was a sense that there's always better information out there that we're not aware of.

And in fact he paired it with another acronym called FOBO, Fear of Better Options.

But over time, FOMO certainly took on a more psychologically

nuanced dimension along the lines of the apprehension of social exclusion.

...