What does it mean to be happy? And what does it take to get there? I feel like, on some level, to understand how we can attain happiness, we also have to consider the impediments to our happiness. What’s stopping us from getting there? I’ve written about both FOMO and the Zeigarnik effect before, but I think they’re worth revisiting. More and more, I’m seeing how they can feed into one another, developing a vicious cycle that buries us deeper and deeper down an endless death spiral of doom, gloom and existential angst.
FOMO: Missing Out on Possibility
So, perhaps we should start by defining these terms and exploring them a bit individually. FOMO stands for the “fear of missing out.” The rise of social media has certainly amplified our experience of FOMO in recent years. We’re not only comparing our lives against what we might hear directly from close friends; we’re comparing our lives with literally everyone on the internet. We look at our own mundane, everyday existence, and compare it against the curated, Insta-worthy portrayal of someone “living their best life.”
When you see other people going all YOLO (“you only live once”) with epic adventures, it’s understandable to experience severe FOMO. Why can’t I do that too? The remedy, we’ve been told, is to embrace JOMO, or the joy of missing out. That’s easier said than done, most certainly.
And even when we put social media comparison aside for a moment, FOMO impacts how we perceive and interpret our life choices too. FOMO lends itself to intense feelings of regret. Society encourages us to seize the day (carpe diem!) and take advantage of every opportunity. Anything short of crushing it just isn’t good enough. So, we overburden and overextend ourselves, because we don’t want to miss out on what might be.
Obsessing Over an Unfinished Zeigarnik Effect
Now, if FOMO is about the fear of missing out, afraid of the potential for regret, then the Zeigarnik effect leads us to obsess over what we haven’t done yet. We plan on doing the thing, so we don’t miss out on the opportunity. But, we have to remember to do the thing, so we obsess over it. If we don’t keep reminding ourselves of this unfinished business, we might forget. Then, we’ll regret missing out on what will surely improve our lot in life, right?
Early 20th century Russian psychiatrist Dr. Bluma Wulfovna Zeigarnik first identified and named the phenomenon in 1927. With the Zeigarnik effect, we tend to remember things we don’t complete more readily than things we do finish. Put another way, we pay more attention to where we came up short than where we were more successful.
We focus on our failures and shortcomings. I know I do.
An Exponential Venn Diagram of Self Destruction
We want to do everything, because we don’t want to miss out on anything. But, we can’t do everything, so we saddle ourselves with guilt over all the things we haven’t done or aren’t doing. It’s utterly self-destructive, but we can’t help ourselves. I can’t help myself.
In this way, it’s not that FOMO and the Zeigarnik effect overlap with one another in some sort of Venn diagram. The impact they have on our lives is not additive; it’s multiplicative. Or exponential either. Their combination is far greater than the sum of their parts. The logical side of me wants to say that we just need to simplify. Don’t worry about missing out. Just focus on your top priorities and make those work.
But, I’m only human. And so, further and further, deeper and deeper, I find myself being sucked down into this vortex of FOMO-fueled and Zeigarnik-amplified self-destruction. I guess if all I can do is keep my head above water, that’ll have to be the best I can do, at least for now. Just let me add “get out of the vortex” to my to-do list. That way, I won’t forget about it.
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