From FOMO to Flow: Missing-Out Mindfully
The age of remote and digital work puts us in a state of continuous connectivity, increasingly blurring the lines between personal and work spaces. Achieving smooth work-life integration is now not only challenging but also essential for a stable mind — ours and those around us. Despite being masters of prioritization and planning, it’s a big problem even for product managers in a world where FOMO is triggered by every email, every meeting invitation, or any digital ping we receive.
It’s a fear of missing out on critical updates, opportunities, problems, or anything on a PM’s plate — and let me tell you, that’s a full plate!
This insecurity in ‘productivity’ and failure to prioritize correctly often makes multitasking seem like the only solution, but this approach quickly leads to fragmented work without sufficient focus on any task. What begins as a quest for work-life integration — or balance, if you say — soon turns into work-life chaos.
To conquer this chaos, our strategy can be simple: confront your fear head-on. Focus on what you can miss out on!
The Power of Writing
Before going head-on into crafting a Missing-Out list on a shiny app, grab a pen and paper. You might wonder why we’re not going digital or choosing a greener solution — I’ll explain these choices at the end of this article. For now, let’s start with writing. Simply use a pen and paper; avoid digital tools for the moment.
Let’s begin by writing today’s date — yes, we’re going to do this every day — and start creating a task list from there.
Missing-Out Consciously
We all think about what we’re going to do every day, but what we often overlook is the other side of the coin: consciously deciding what we’re not going to do today. Yes, ultimately, we will plan and prioritize what we need to do, but deciding on what we’re not going to do — at least for today — is the first step. Now, I want you to write down all the tasks in your mind, one by one, and make them visually tangible on a piece of paper. I want you to see and feel this pile of tasks physically. You can grab different papers and create multiple lists consisting of different themes according to time frame, size & complexity, subject, and whether they are personal or business-related.
Some tips:
- Avoid non-actionable items: These create an unclear picture of the task. Use verbs to overcome this. You can even group tasks according to these verbs.
- Break down large tasks: Avoid listing large tasks that are not divided into smaller parts. Instead, divide them into achievable and manageable sizes. Try to have tasks of similar sizes.
- Keep lists realistic: Do not create long lists that you cannot complete in the short term.
- Do not prioritize: At least not yet.
Balance your to-do list with these extra items:
- Mundane tasks: Your daily personal tasks or routine tasks.
- Preparation tasks: There is a reasonable amount you need to prepare before meetings, presentations, etc. You can put them on your list.
- Big plans and ideas: These can be some long-term plans to tackle on later. For a product manager, it can be new ideas about your product, features to be decided for competition, etc.
Of course, there are items to exclude from your to-do list, such as one-on-one meetings, group meetings, or periods of focused time alone to reorder your list. This is not your calendar. Instead, after these meetings, ensure to capture any actionable outputs and add them directly to your to-do list.
After you’ve done all this and created a pile of to-do lists, what I want you to do next is to mark the tasks that you won’t do today or tomorrow and write when you will plan them. You can use a special symbol or color but please don’t go into detail; just mark them and write a date. The date you put for each list item will be the day you plan for that task; it won’t be the day the tasks will be completed.
“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage — pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically, to say ‘no’ to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger ‘yes’ burning inside.” — Stephen Covey
Now that you have decided what you can actually miss out on, what remains is a to-do list for today (if it’s a morning plan) or tomorrow (if it’s an evening plan). I want you to refine this to-do list by assigning imaginary sizes to each item. These should be concise notes that you can easily understand. If you have your own scale for effort estimation, feel free to use it; this is about tailoring the process to your needs.
A PM’s Plate
Let’s say you’re in a restaurant, and the chef on duty asks you to take and distribute 10 plates at once. You, eager to excel and with the belief you see in the chef’s eyes (even though only you see that belief), take all the plates and start carrying them. However, you’ve placed them so unsteadily, and the load is so heavy that your arm starts to tremble, and some of the dishes fall as you exit the kitchen. The customers receiving their meals start to complain, and you freeze in the kitchen, realizing you not only have to clean up the mess but also won’t be able to bring out new plates. When you turn to the chef, you can see the disappointment in his eyes. Unfortunately, what you hear is this: “I gave you 10 plates, you broke 5 of them, and the remaining 5 weren’t good enough.” The result is that you’ll never be able to carry 10 plates again or it’ll take a very long time to reach that level.
Now let’s switch to another scenario: when the chef tells you there are 10 customers in the restaurant and you need to serve 10 plates, each with different meals that might risk getting mixed up or producing conflicting odors if carried together. You decide to do this task in 2 steps and complete both in a total of 10 minutes. What do you think, will the customers be bothered by this? The chef will probably respond: “10 minutes is definitely a good pace, especially considering other restaurants nearby; after we finish this, we can think about how to do it even faster.” Now, with 5 plates in your hand, you continue on your way, but unfortunately, despite your efforts, another waiter bumps into you, causing one plate to fall, and you only manage to serve 4. You quickly return, report the missing plate, and after a quick cleanup, the kitchen has already prepared another plate. The chef says, “You served 10 plates perfectly in 10 minutes, but one plate fell. That’s okay, 90% success. I’m sure you’ll distribute all of them next time, maybe even try 15 plates?”
Yes, it may be a humorous example and not entirely realistic, but it illustrates the situation well. In the first scenario, although you carried more plates, the result was perceived as much worse, and unfortunately, you lost some chances. The issue here involves setting expectations and managing the level of disappointment proportional to those expectations. Both setting these expectations accurately for yourself and not taking on a burden you can’t handle are crucial. When dividing this burden, the most important part is to convey the right message and reach an agreement, which is critical. In the business world, the best self-marketing is how well you meet expectations. Therefore, only put as many to-do items on your list as you can realistically handle in a day, and plan by eliminating the rest. Then, communicate this plan and ensure everyone agrees. Now you can start serving with ease!
Next Step: Prioritization
Yes, you’ve made your list; now, you need to find the tasks that will have the biggest impact because deciding their order is a very crucial point. You have limited time and a limited number of tasks. Of course, not every customer coming to the restaurant will have the same priority for you — some may need immediate attention while others can wait a bit longer. So please make sure you’re doing this well, starting with tasks that will create the most impact. You can find plenty of different templates and methods for prioritization; any of them will do the job. The important thing is to prioritize somehow; that’s all there is to it.
The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities. — Stephen Covey
Level Up Your Efficiency
After prioritizing, and let’s assume you’ve successfully done so, now it’s time to step up and observe. To advance in your career and overcome FOMO, you need to find ways to do what you’re doing now faster, easier, and if possible, without your involvement. This involves not just delegation but KAIZEN or continuous improvement, where delegation plays a part. The goal is to make every task so easy and efficient that the process can advance without anyone here, or even without a person. This is the hardest part of the job and requires the most creativity, whether you delegate or automate. To achieve this, serious observation is necessary.
Now, I want you to continue this plan for one day for a month, but if this is too difficult, you can start with a week. I want you to keep track of each task so that you can look back for a retrospective. You’ll see that many of the tasks you do every day are the same. I want you to make each list unique for a month and note their frequencies. We will focus on the tasks with the highest frequency, and the ones with the lowest frequency will be our starting point.
Let’s ask ourselves about high-frequency tasks:
- Why do I need to do this so often?
- What’s its importance?
- What would happen if I didn’t do it every day?
If you don’t have good answers to these questions, you can try reducing the frequency or improving efficiency. Delegation is also an option.
On the other hand, for tasks with very low frequency, you can ask yourself:
- Why do I need to do this so rarely?
- Are these tasks unimportant and unnecessary every day?
Based on the answers, you might decide that you do these tasks less than necessary, or due to constraints, only a maximum number can be done. Following the same steps will reduce your list and make you more effective. Remember, our goal is to keep reducing this list every month.
Manage your To-Do List, Manage your Career
When you start doing this every month, you may find that you can’t shrink the list; new tasks keep coming. Please don’t panic; if this is the case, it means you’re on the right track. But if the list keeps shrinking and you can’t add new tasks, then we might have a problem. You may not be good at self-marketing your impact, which is crucial for showcasing your ability to handle more or varied responsibilities and advancing in your career. This is a separate issue, and it’s a big one for this article.
However, the situation is usually the opposite, and new tasks will always have a bigger impact. If not, you can continue to eliminate them. This famous scaling issue, which involves effectively managing and adapting your workload as responsibilities grow, is talked about everywhere. It’s easy to say, hard to do; once you understand the basic logic, you can succeed by trying.
But don’t forget our rule: when a task reaches its peak efficiency, only then do we delete it from our list; however, doing this just to reduce our list won’t be effective.
These retrospective evaluations you do backward monthly, annually, or seasonally will show you where you’ve gone in your career and will help you get rid of FOMO by ensuring you’re always focused on the most important and correct things, bringing back the balance in your personal life.
Another benefit is that in every career interview, you’ll have a fantastic development roadmap and a stack of tasks that you can present as evidence. Along with this, there will be daily routines that make communication with your manager easier.
The Power of Writing
Now, why do we prefer pen and paper instead of digital tools? It’s all about making the process tangible; if you’re just starting and don’t yet have the habit, the best way to do this is with physical notes. Each note you write down and place on the shelf will relax you and give you a sense of accomplishment. The stack of notes you see will prevent you from becoming complacent, while well-organized notes will save you from falling into relaxation and procrastination. Write down your notes and lists twice a day, at times that suit you best — ideally, at the beginning and end of the day, but you can also visit them more frequently throughout the day if you wish. If you’ve practiced this enough, of course, continuing digitally will be much greener, but for the time being, you can imagine yourself sitting cozily in a library full of large, organized, and read books.
