It’s quite a common thing during the first couple of coaching sessions: the short buzz followed by the client secretly gazing at their telephone. Then a quick look at me, checking if I saw them do it (which I always do, of course), followed by a smirky apology. They needed to check, it was really important, because… What follows then differs from client to client. Some are checking business messages, others are trying to keep up with what’s going on at home. Often it’s just a matter of curiosity, but sometimes they are dealing with real emergencies.
What remains the same is that they all get distracted from what they were trying to do. And, judging from the look on their faces, they all know they should be focusing on the coaching call instead.
The thing is, I don’t really care. It’s their time and money, and they decide how they want to spend it. Of course, it’s the perfect opportunity to discuss their priorities and their behavior and what usually follows is an interesting discussion about those things. And I will be the first to acknowledge how difficult it is to resist the temptation of your phone buzzing and bleeping. Or how uneasy you can feel when there is no news and you keep checking your devices.
Fear of missing out
Like last summer, when I was in France for a holiday, while parts of Europe were facing extreme floods. With the river Maas running through my hometown of Maastricht, we’ve had our share of floods in the past. But I wasn’t worried. Just before driving off to France I had reassured my 20 year old neighbor, who had never seen anything like it, that everything would be okay.
Maybe I shouldn’t have…
That same night she sent me a video of a street two blocks down being flooded after heavy rainfall. It was what I had expected, the lower streets filling up. Then the next day, just two hours after arriving at our final destination, I received the call: the mayor had ordered 10.000 people to evacuate their homes. My home was one of them.
There I was, 600 miles away on vacation, feeling powerless and very stressed.
Thankfully my family and friends came to the rescue, clearing my living room of most of my stuff. In the (worst case) scenario, I would only have to replace an old cork floor that was clearly showing signs of aging. And my crappy old piano that I wasn’t playing anyway. But despite all the help and knowing that most of my stuff was safe, I couldn’t help it. My mind kept wandering off, thinking about the condition I would find my place in upon return.
For the next hours I found myself clinging to my phone, trying to check the news on the flooding. Except, the little old farmhouse where we were staying was located in the middle of nowhere. So my internet connection decided to die right then and there.
Suddenly I experienced exactly what my clients experienced: FOMO, or Fear Of Missing Out.
Preparing for the worst
No matter how you try to rationalize a situation, when something unexpected happens our brains turn into a messy stress-inducing machine. They are wired for danger, producing stress hormones that prioritize immediate action over deliberate thought. Of course, when you are being chased by a bear, that is exactly what you need to survive. In the case of a potential flood, it is still understandable that you want to know what is going to happen. You want to prepare for the worst, right? Well, at least I wanted to even though my stuff was safe.
And that is probably what everyone else wants to do. You want to be on top of things, so you can respond quickly to any threats, whatever they might be. So, when your phone buzzes or your screen lights up with a message, your response is to check it, just in case.
The problem is that if you are constantly preparing for the worst, your brain will also constantly be flooded with stress hormones, influencing your responses, preventing you from reaching deep focus. And, ultimately and way more severely, affecting your brain connectivity in a harmful way. Most people don’t realize it, but prolonged stress really damages your brain, reducing the connections between brain networks.
So you see, there are several reasons why you want to teach yourself to respond differently to challenges, unknown situations and even possible floods. Because suffering from FOMO means you are exposing yourself to prolonged stress. It might be mild, but it’s undeniably there.
Define your own emergencies
Instead of constantly being scared to miss out on something that might or might not turn into a problem, teach yourself the difference between the two. That way you focus on what is important and ignore the rest. How? By clearly defining what really is an emergency and what isn’t.
Bears and floods might be life-threatening, your regular business and personal affairs usually aren’t. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to stay on top. Just learn to differentiate between what needs your immediate attention and what doesn’t. And stop yourself from getting agitated over nothing or losing focus.
Next time you find yourself grabbing your phone while you are in a meeting with someone else or when you should be focusing on your work, realize that that is exactly what you are doing. Also realize there is a better way. From now on, try to miss out on prolonged stress and distractions. That’s what you can really do without.
Missing out isn’t always a bad thing
As for my FOMO, that night in France I soon discovered that missing out isn’t always a bad thing. From time to time my connection returned and I spent an hour reading on and off some horrible stories of houses in Germany and Belgium swept away by the water. I knew that Maastricht was not in that kind of danger but still felt restless when I went to sleep. After all, I knew that around 3 AM the river would reach its highest point and might submerge my neighbourhood.
The next morning I jumped out of bed and , still in my pyjama’s I walked outdoors into the sunny French hillside, searching for an internet connection that could tell me what the status was. As soon as my mobile browser loaded the page, I found that it was a false alarm and my neighborhood and my house was still on dry grounds. I sighed relieved, realizing that I had been right all along telling my neighbor we would be okay. And that I had been better off not reading all those alarming stories.