Embracing the Joy of Missing Out
Reclaim Your Life by Accepting That You Will Miss Out
Since I started my software career, I have constantly felt behind. How do my colleagues find time to learn about new technologies, work on side projects, and work through their tasks at a breakneck speed? How do they do this while traveling, having a partner, being a parent, and keeping up a social life?
Coined by Anil Dash in a blog post in 2012, the joy of missing out (JOMO) is a play on the popular fear of missing out (FOMO). I skimmed that article in preparation for writing this one, albeit I have not read much of Anil’s content nor Tanya Dalton’s 2019 book by the same name. Yet, these thoughts are inspired by Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks.
What I keep seeing in career coaching communities on Slack, Reddit, and everywhere else is this common belief that you should be doing more. I hear this from teammates as well. This constant overwhelm whereby you want to give 100% to your job, 100% to your kids, 100% to your spouse, 100% to your fitness, and so on.
As you probably already calculated, that is mathematically impossible. We have finite time. The number of things we can do with that time, especially when considering all the combinations of said things over the next year of our life, approaches infinity. So we are going to fail to do everything. And that is okay.
Take a deep breath. With that knowledge, you are freed, unshackled. You are choosing to read this article right now. What does that mean? It means you are not choosing to do a whole host of other things. I want to make these minutes worth it for you, because I know you could be checking your email (you’re thinking about, right?) or spending time with loved ones.
Every time you choose to do something, you are choosing not to do something else. With that knowledge, prioritize. Be conscious of what you’re saying no to, and say it happily. No can be your default response. Why? You might have room for 2, maybe 3, things at a time in your life. That’s good. Make them things that matter.
I recently got off most social media. I stopped responding to every email and professional invite that came my way. That time was reclaimed. I now miss out on all of the updates of lives I could be living and events I could be going to from Facebook. I’m okay with that. I’m harder to reach, and that’s a good thing.
I have also accepted that the list of things that I expected myself to maintain is unreasonable. Sure, journaling, meditating, lifting weights, doing cardio, planning your day, reading, doing side projects, starting technical projects, maintaining several close friendships, volunteering, blogging, and so on are great for your life. Can I do all of them? No. Is that a failure? No. I now pick what I want to do, knowing I am choosing to do it.
It’s not a perfect system, but it’s much better than being under the illusion that I should be able to do it all and that anything is failure. If I thought I could do it all, I would fail to prioritize.
So, perhaps this article is really about prioritization. But, honestly, I want to lean in to finding the joy of missing out. Then, how much sweeter are the things you choose to do? By accepting that you are missing out on everything else by choosing to do what you are doing right now, you can spend your time enjoying it.
