FOMO — How to not achieve your goals
Fear of missing out (a.k.a. FOMO) is the biggest show-stopper for aspiring entrepreneurs, artists, and opportunists around. Seeing an idea or something happening that you’re not currently involved in or that could be your “big breakthrough” makes you doubt your current work and position. Trust me, I know fully well about this phenomenon, having experienced it throughout my life many times, almost every day recently. I feel like this is something every one experiences in one form or another. I’ll be looking to give you a way to deal with FOMO from my perspective, a 20 year-old kid who thinks his 2 cents on the issue will help with your outlook.
PS: I’ve included my Linkedin and project links at the bottom if interested in finding out more — I write a lot in my private change logs (programmers dairy), so I thought I’d share some of the lessons and teachings with others.
As a software engineer, university student and entrepreneur (I need to find another word for it, entrepreneur nowadays sounds like a scam), I work on many projects concurrently. While most of my peers would say I’m a workaholic, I say I’m “investing in the future”. Hell, I even enjoy working this much. One thing I’ve realised though as I work on so many different things is my inability to say “No” to new ideas which I’ve discovered hinders my ability to complete and achieve my goals.
I’m currently running a SaaS platform for e-commerce sellers, Ecom Pilot, while working a full-time job as a Software Engineer Degree Apprentice, while doing a part-time Computer Science degree, Amazon FBA and now starting a tree-planting social business afiliatree. As a solo founder with Ecom Pilot, I find myself wearing many hats. From marketing, blog posting to development and customer service, its a lot of work that’s encompassed under one project, but that’s what it takes nowadays if you don’t have VC funding to gather a team, or if you want to bootstrap your way. It may be because of my age and immaturity that I feel FOMO for other opportunities. I see people talking about blog posting, creating youtube channels, trading crypto or other growth opportunities where I find hard to say “No”, even though deep down I know that the projects I’m currently working on are the ones with more potential and founder-fit to me.
At first, I thought “I can take more things on” — that quickly turned out to be false. Feeling burnt-out trying to create videos alongside a full-time job and 2 large side-projects, I’ve dived deeper into the real issue of why I want to pick up so many projects and ideas.
The issue isn’t that I’m easily distracted or can’t complete a task, the real issue is that I’m cutting my losses — I’m preparing to fail. The more things I’m involved in, the more chance you have of succeeding and growth right? No, while its good to work on things concurrently to gain experience and build character, never spread yourself too thin. While I thought this would be a bitter pill to swallow, it actually gave me the much needed clarity which I needed to help better focus and drive my current projects to success. I can scratch my own itch of blog posting by sharing my thoughts and lessons with you here now, but apart from that, in order to succeed in current projects what I needed was OBSESSION. If you’re obsessed with your current project and seeing it succeed beyond your wildest imagination, then that FOMO feeling you’re familiar with doesn’t even come close to manifesting; you’re too busy and too driven on your current goals. It’s worked wonders for me, and while I’m not able to apply it all the time, I continue to practice this mindset as much as I can.
To conclude, obsess with your current projects and goals. Change your perception of looking for the next idea and realise that you are on the right path now! Move that drive and creativity from new ideas, projects and opportunities to your current one and watch it blossom. Your projects will always be more difficult than you first imagined, but the rewards will also be much greater. Visualise the current project’s success and strive towards it. You owe it to your future self to stay driven and focused now.
My projects and links to Linkedin and social medias — reach out and say hello!
Ecom Pilot — https://ecompilot.net (Product Research tool for sellers)
afiliatree — https://afiliatree.com (Plant trees while shopping online)
Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/modern_founder/
