FOMO is Ruining Your Life – Here’s How to Handle It

A practical guide to reducing fear of missing out

FOMO is a well-documented psychological pattern linked to anxiety, lower life satisfaction, and compulsive decision-making in high-choice environments like business school and ambitious careers. Integrating leading psychological research with an MVP decision making framework offers a path to reduce FOMO and improve satisfaction and outcomes.

The Friday night blues

It’s been a long week. Inane tasks that appear to generate value for no one — calls, meetings, coffee chats — eat up the waking hours. At last, it’s Friday night. Ugh… one more problem to solve: what to do with your hard-earned freedom?

Time is regularly served up omakase style, colorful blocks on glowing screens fending off the blank abyss of optionality. When multiple blocks battle for your attention, a familiar sensation arises: that creeping fear of making the wrong choice.

Hello, FOMO, my old friend.

Should you go out with your classmates? Grab dinner with that person you’ve been meaning to see for weeks? Or stay in, get ahead on work, and tell yourself it’s “self-care”?

What if you pick the wrong path — and miss something extraordinary?

Welcome to the psychological plague of our generation.

What is FOMO exactly?

Psychologist Andrew Przybylski defines fear of missing out as a “pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent,” coupled with a strong desire to stay connected to what others are doing.

This research shows that people high in FOMO tend to feel that their basic needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are less satisfied, and they report lower mood and life satisfaction. In other words, FOMO is not simply about wanting in on the party; it reflects a deeper worry that your life decisions are inferior to everyone else’s, and that you are somehow failing at using your time “correctly.”

This helps explain why FOMO is strongly tied to social media use; FOMO both drives constant checking and is worsened by the endless comparison that checking creates.

The outcomes are familiar to many of us: elevated anxiety when choosing between options that all seem “important,” and reduced ability to enjoy the option you did choose — because your attention is stuck on hypothetical alternatives.

Why FOMO is getting worse

Two forces amplify FOMO for young professionals in particular:

First, the menu of options has exploded. Survey work and later empirical research suggest that younger adults experience especially high FOMO in environments where there is a constant awareness of what others are doing and an abundance of alternative experiences.

Second, the number of external “life advisors” has multiplied. Social media, career newsletters, podcasts, and LinkedIn influencers offer conflicting prescriptions for the optimal life: chase impact, maximize upside, optimize optionality, find balance. When decision criteria keep shifting based on the latest post or podcast episode, your own sense of what matters is easily drowned out.

The research on social media addiction shows that FOMO is positively correlated with anxiety, depression, loneliness, and low self-esteem, suggesting that this is not a harmless quirk but a risk factor for broader mental health strain. In a setting where overachievers are systematically exposed to more opportunities and more comparison, it is unsurprising that FOMO feels like constant background noise.

Shiny object syndrome: FOMO’s louder cousin

If FOMO is the unease that someone else might be doing something better, shiny object syndrome is the impulse to chase whatever that “something better” currently appears to be, according to a 2024 study by Uncover Counseling. Conceptually, it resembles a novelty-seeking pattern, where the brain’s reward system overvalues new ideas, roles, or projects relative to the boring but important work of follow-through.

Descriptions of shiny object syndrome highlight three recurring features:

1. Strong attraction to new opportunities with a corresponding drop in motivation for existing commitments.

2. Impulsive decision-making, where people leap into new ventures without evaluating fit or long-term implications.

3. Chronic overcommitment and unfinished projects, leading to burnout and a sense of never fully succeeding at anything.

FOMO and shiny object syndrome feed one another. The fear of missing out supplies the emotional pressure (“What if this is the opportunity?”), while shiny object syndrome supplies the behavioral response (“I’ll just add this too”). In high-choice, status-conscious environments, this loop can result in calendars so full that no single experience is ever fully inhabited.

Beneath it all: A decision-making problem

Viewed through the research, FOMO is less about phones and more about decision architecture. People high in FOMO are more likely to engage heavily with social media, but the underlying issue is that they feel less clear about their needs and less satisfied with their choices.

Most of us make decisions using one or more flawed approaches:

1. Outsourcing criteria to others’ values and highlight reels.

2. Overweighting short-term novelty (the shiny object) over long-term alignment.

3. Relying on purely analytical metrics (comp, brand, prestige) without checking emotional fit, which almost guarantees regret later.

Przybylski’s work links higher FOMO to lower satisfaction of basic psychological needs, suggesting that when we don’t make decisions that support our sense of autonomy, competence, and connection, we become more vulnerable to comparison and second-guessing. If your choices are not genuinely yours, FOMO will find plenty of cracks to slip through.

MVP decision-making: A practical antidote

One way to counter both FOMO and shiny object syndrome is to borrow a concept from startup life: the minimum viable product, reimagined as a minimum viable priority set. In product terms, an MVP is the simplest version that successfully fulfills a core purpose; everything beyond that is an enhancement, not a requirement.

Applied to your life, an MVP is a short list — usually two to four items — of must-haves for a particular season or decision domain (business school, next job, relationship). Anything beyond those is a “nice-to-have.”

For example, a business school MVP might be:

• Build a small number of deep friendships.

• Explore one or two career hypotheses meaningfully (e.g., internship, project, part-time role).

• Maintain a sustainable baseline of physical and mental health.

If those are your must-haves, then attending every trek, every speaker, and every social event is no longer a necessity; it is an optional feature. You can miss out on plenty and still have a wildly successful experience by your own definition.

Making the MVP actually work

For the MVP framework to reduce FOMO rather than let it devolve into another optimization game, the must-haves need to satisfy both intellectual and emotional criteria. Research on FOMO and need satisfaction suggests that decisions that support autonomy (choosing for your own reasons), competence (feeling effective), and relatedness (feeling connected) are the best protection against FOMO-like doubts.

A simple process affirms that framework:

1. Reflect on lived data. List the moments in the past year when you felt most alive versus most drained. Look for patterns in people, activities, and environments rather than titles or brands .

2. Extract needs, not labels. Translate “I loved my internship” into needs like autonomy, learning, impact, or camaraderie. These map closely to the needs associated with lower FOMO in the literature.

3. Define your must-haves. Choose a small set of non-negotiables that express those needs for the next 6–12 months. Everything else is negotiable.

Once you have this MVP, each new “shiny object” gets a quick filter: does this serve at least one of my must-haves in a meaningful way? If not, the default answer is no — not because it’s bad, but because it’s off-thesis. That is how investors avoid chasing every hot deal; the same discipline applies to your time.

From FOMO to JOMO

Recent work conceptualizes FOMO as having both a “pervasive apprehension” side (the unhealthy worry you’re always behind) and a “desire for connection” side (the healthy wish to belong). The goal of these techniques is not to suppress the desire for connection, but to quiet the chronic apprehension by making your criteria explicit and aligned with your own needs.

You will still miss out — on most things, in fact. But if what you are “missing” is incompatible with your MVP, you are not losing; you are editing. And a well-edited life is far more satisfying.

So next Friday night, when your phone lights up with options, you can ask a different question. Not “What if I pick the wrong path?” but “What choice is aligned with my MVP?” If the research is any guide, having that answer — and owning it — will do more for your well-being than adding another event on your calendar.

Atticus Maloney (MBA ’27) is from Augusta, Maine. He studied economics and environmental studies at Swarthmore College. Prior to HBS, he worked at Boston Consulting Group, where he advised clients on climate strategy, carbon accounting, M&A, and operating model design. His writing explores strategic career, life, and financial decision-making in a world being rapidly reshaped by artificial intelligence and climate change and can also be found on Substack at atticusmaloney.substack.com.