Sign in Subscribe
By Jose Bigio —

Fear of Missing Out

That past weekend a viral creator, Anthony Po held a Timothee Chalamet look alike competition. Unfortunately in scrambling to make it to a haunted housewarming I missed the event. The lookalike contest turned out to be a cultural phenomenon in its own right. The lookalikes were invited to a football game, someone was arrested, and a lot of the internet is talking about it.

In a less famous vein there's the continuing storyline of William Banks

who is hosting a going away party before he goes to jail. The outcome of this event will be wildly different, but I'd still like to witness it. Unfortunately I won't be in town and can't make it.

In life there's always going to be tradeoffs, and we won't always be able to do everything we want. The internet definitely plays a role of exposing us to this. Social media feeds show us what friends and strangers do with their free time. There is a seemingly unlimited amount of content, and cultural references to keep up with. Problematically our phones compete for our attention making it harder for us to do other things as well. One creator August focuses on reducing your reliance on technology! Maybe this is signaling my over reliance on phones / technologies, but I think there is a benefit to the connectivity we get from the internet. For instance, I only learned about the Timothee Chalamet lookalike contest via the internet.

August writes for substack as do many people. The co-founder of substack recently published an article about the writers or blogs on substack that he thinks are most influential. This is additional content that I know I won't be able to keep up with, but I am now subscribed to.

I recently shared this tweet with my friend the other day

and he stated that he wouldn't be able to do this, because the podcasts he listens to are too good. In some way I'm too afraid to know what he is listening to because then I'll be face to face with more things that I know I am missing out on.

Somehow I've come to terms with accepting I'll miss out on a lot of media. I'm okay not seeing great tv shows people are talking about, or following a lot of the reality tv that people are. I don't have a problem not knowing the main musical artists and songs of today.

For whatever reason I do care about missing great books. I've tried to read the Stormlight Archive series a few times, and the extensiveness of the book mixed with my inconsistent dedication makes it hard to get into the books. I also have a broken system I use for reading books. I'll borrow the books digitally via Libby which gives me 21 days to read them once I get the hold. Then in order to extend the expiration period of the books I download them on my kindle and turn off the wifi. Without access to the network I can have the books indefinitely, until I turn the wifi on again. The problem here is I am often requesting holds on other books. The outcome is that I now have books on my kindle that if I were to turn the wifi on would expire, and books on my phone via Libby that I can't get on my kindle without losing other books. This means that I start reading books on my phone, but that's a terrible experience, because any little distraction can pull me away from the book.

When I was younger it was easy to off load plans to my future self. In 9th grade when we started reading Shakespeare and I barely understood the plays, that was okay I would understand it better a few years down the road. In college when I didn't fully understand a math theorem, that was okay I'd learn it later on. Now that enough time has elapsed I realized the fallacy of waiting for the future. Of course we have limited time, and at a later date there may be more freedom to pursue things. Nonetheless, the best time to do something is now.

A common phrase to capture these feelings is fear of missing out or abbreviated as fomo. This is usually used to describe missing out on social situations and events and less on missing out on information. I think I agree with that usage. Realistically there isn't going to be another Timothee Chalamet lookalike contest and hence the fear of missing out. However, Shakespeare's works as far as we can tell are always going to be there, and so you can always start to enjoy them. In some way what I am lamenting is a broader fear of missing out due to the impermanence of life. We won't live forever, and therefore we won't have time to do or learn everything so we have to choose how we use our time.

What I seem to be talking about is regret. Regretting to read Shakespeare is a funny thing because you can go read it at any time. Perhaps Shakespeare is not even the appropriate example here, because in one of the Shakespeare plays I have, the intro mentions the plays are best experienced via a performance.

Regret is an interesting feeling, because it can motivate you to make a change or it can just make you dwell on elements you might not change. In my case I realize there is so much I want to do that realistically I don't know when I am going to do it. In this case the regret doesn't serve me well.

Regret is also a weird framing, because it's often used to describe something that happened in the past. For instance, you might regret that you didn't spend more time with friends when in school. In this case I am regretting that I won't have get to everything before that has even happened. For the most part the regret is not even that I am disappointed with how I choose to spend my time. On the whole I think I make good use of my time. Although, in the moment the feelings are more conflicted. Take today, I opted to not go on a bike ride with friends because I am feeling sick, the NYC marathon is going on, but I don't think I'll catch it. There's a chamber music event going on and I am not sure that I will head to it. My worry is that when the day is over I won't feel satisfied with how I spent my time. Ideally this concern would serve a purpose and lead me to take action. In practice, I might not be satisfied at the end of the day, and I'll also have worried throughout the day.

This notion of "wont' be satisfied with the day" is dubious anyway. I don't have good criteria of what a satisfying day entails. In some way I probably crave structure, and the freedom of a weekend with the looming workday coming create more pressure to enjoying the day off.

On the other end of this spectrum the New York Times recently wrote about how long is too long to stay in bed? This article brings up the idea of "revenge bedtime procrastination" which is staying up late at night, because your daytime schedule lacks time for leisure time. I definitely experienced revenge bedtime procrastination, but I also experience something different which is aspirational bedtime procrastination. In these cases I'll get excited about the opportunities that lie in front of me, and all I can do to seize these opportunities. Only for the next day to be a mundane day, and for the aspirations to be thought about sporadically.

The reality is that our life is largely composed of mundane moments (article that highlights this idea in different vein). This is related to the hedonistic treadmill, which is the idea that we return to a stable level of happiness despite positive or negative life changes. Most of the days in my life will be simple ordinary days, and not being able to accept that and resisting this leads to these feelings. I have a hard time remembering accomplished weekends, and not so accomplished weekends. Although I'm hard on myself about how I use my time in the present I don't really remember the "good weekends" nor the "bad weekends". I am aware of this critical part of me that is trying to optimize my life, and make the most of it. I know this is a recurring theme, but I don't remember the exact instances. It's something that I carry with me. I am trying to learn that it's not that life is beautiful and fleeting; it's beautiful because it's fleeting. So I'll have to continue to learn to go the way the wind blows me (accept serendipity), but coexist with some plan!

Subscribe to thoughts

Don’t miss out on the latest issues. Sign up now to get access to the library of members-only issues.
jamie@example.com
Subscribe