I had never really made the connection before this, but Sherlock Holmes practices a form of the so–called Joy of Missing Out. I’ll come to that in a moment; first we need to understand what JoMO is and, parenthetically, what FoMO is.

The Fear of Missing Out, or FoMO, was added to the Oxford English dictionary in August of 2013. It is defined as anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, often aroused by posts seen on a social media website. I think we can do away with that last clause: FoMO is not restricted to social media alone and is as rampant offline as it is on the web.

JoMO, or the Joy of Missing Out, then is the remedy to this curse. I would define it as the habit of being in the present and enjoying one thing we have set our mind to now, and depleting our worries of the what if. Blogger Anil Dash was the one who coined the term JoMO, while the wonderful Caterina Fake deserves credit for FoMO.

Jenna Wortham’s old article on JoMO, titled “Turn off the phone (and the tension)”, in The New York Times is a great read.

Sherlock Holmes and the solar system

JoMO is a relatively recent concept; it is as little as a year-and-a-half old. FoMO, the culprit, is a like carbon monoxide in that it affects us without our realisation: it drives our decisions, often unhappy ones; it makes us feel miserable; it divides our attention; it tricks us into losing focus; it causes anxiety about something that does not even exist.

Joy of Missing Out is all about taking FoMO head on and coming out on top. Set your mind to one thing, do it, let social media go. The key aspect here is that we feel we miss out on something, but the harsh truth is that the world will go on without it, so will our lives.

Sherlock Holmes comes to mind. Here is a nice little conversation with Watson in A Study in Scarlet:

That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth traveled round the sun appeared to me to be such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

‘You appear to be astonished,’ he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. ‘Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.’

‘To forget it!’

‘You see,’ he explained, ‘I consider that a man’s brain is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.’

‘But the Solar System!’ I protested.

‘What the deuce is it to me?’ he interrupted impatiently: ‘you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.’

Forget about it

The fact that the Earth going around the Moon instead of the Sun would make a lot of difference is fodder for another debate. The takeaway from Holmes’ statement is that, sometimes, not knowing, not experiencing, not participating — or specifically not forcing oneself to do all this — can be a good thing. That missing out does not mean losing an opportunity, but getting more time to dedicate to a task already at hand, to judiciously concentrate on something close to our heart.

There is no chant to help tread across a shortcut here; but when FoMO grips — when you find yourself swaying between doing something you want to do and doing something motivated by your seeing others doing it — just tell yourself to forget about it. Think, Donnie Brasco:

Stop blaming technology

At the end of the day we can all point our fingers at technology, but remember (with apologies to Mahatma Gandhi) technology cannot hurt you without your permission. You’re letting it get to you.

Of course, one way of experiencing JoMO is to literally let go of technology. John Saddington did this and describes his experience in better words than I can sum up: “The silence is deafening and absolutely wonderful.” My point, though, is that while this could work — and work effectively — it does not necessarily have to be the solution. Technology can be helpful as was its intention all along. All one needs is a little self–control.

Better choice of tech helps too. For instance, in case of my iPhone, I find that using apps that are targeted and minimal helps immensely. Pennies, for example, is an app I use to track my finances. It does its job in a straightforward manner and gets it over with. I use Fantastical because its natural language entry makes working on the app super fast. I cut down messaging apps to a bare minimum, and targeted apps like Snapped and Coach.me have a well–defined use case. What they all have in common is that they allow you to enter the app, complete your intended task as quickly as possible and quit. Such well–chosen apps can help limit tech use while simultaneously remaining useful and relevant.

Consequences

Missing out can have its consequences. But then everything has consequences. As Ms Wortham says in her article in The New York Times, “Lounging in the sun and chatting with a friend without the intrusion of texts and alerts into our lives felt positively luxurious.” The perks of missing out, as far as technology is concerned, easily outweighs the things we think we are missing out. Technology is a new thing, and it seems reasonable to think that FoMO is a passing phenomenon that will die down as our use of technology matures. The NY Times article says as much, suggesting we were, in 2012, in a kind of adolescence with social media and technology. Three years later, we are much worse. The simple reason for this is the growth of technology alongside us; it is no longer something one passes through in life and whose relationship neutralises eventually. In fact, the growth of tech means we are more likely to latch onto it and stay latched on.

I cannot say if all the people who believed in saying no and letting go back then, when FoMO and JoMO came up, are still following those practises. Perhaps they are. I for one, have only recently begun and cannot say how long it will last. If the past month is any indication, I only see myself letting go even more. (For the curious, I quit Google+, Ello and several other online presences/habits/rituals. I even wrote about it, briefly.)

If you find yourself wondering, then the answer is, yes, you should experience the joy of missing out. If for nothing, at least so you can be in a position next time to justify why you fear missing out.

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