The HBS alum who coined the Fear of Missing Out 20 years ago shares his take on how to beat it.
Patrick McGinnis (MBA ’04) was always the person who made up words. A self-proclaimed “simple kid from small-town Maine,” he coined a term that would end up in Merriam-Webster and come to define a generation: FOMO.
After powering through his GMAT exam in the Fall of 2001, McGinnis enjoyed a well-deserved night at the bar with friends in New York City. Stepping outside to head home in the wee hours, he was struck by the beautiful view of the city’s skyline downtown – and in particular, the World Trade Center. Waking the next morning, McGinnis headed to his office at Rockefeller Center, where he learned that the skyline would never look the same. That morning was September 11th, 2001. The tragic events of that day hit like a lightning bolt – along with feelings of sadness and anger, McGinnis was thrust into a carpe diem mindset. The world he previously knew had changed irrevocably, and as a result he felt an intense need to live in the present.
Bringing that mentality to HBS, McGinnis tried to do everything. He said, “I just wanted to do it all. I realized everybody was the same - we were all equally frenzied.” Before long, though, stretching past capacity caused McGinnis to short-circuit. “One moment I just realized this sucks – I’m sick, stressed, hungover, and tired.” On top of that, McGinnis observed that HBS students hated to commit to anything. For fear of a better option, students were chronically indecisive. “I have 73 job offers for the summer, should I do McKinsey or Bain!?”
McGinnis boiled these observations down into a simple phrase that encapsulated the HBS student condition: Fear of Missing Out, or FOMO. A proud promoter, he slipped the term into conversations and emails whenever possible. Ultimately, he found the phenomenon so absurd that he had to write about it – in less than an hour, he whipped out a satirical piece that was printed in the Harbus right before graduation in 2004. Business Week ran an article on FOMO and HBS graduates spread it via word-of-mouth in their new places of employment. Ultimately, though, the term’s takeoff was made possible by a neighbor close to home in Cambridge. Seven minutes from McGinnis’ Soldiers’ Field Park apartment lived an undergraduate named Mark Zuckerberg. With the advent of social media, FOMO caught fire.
But what is it? McGinnis identified two core elements of FOMO: “aspirational” and “herd.” Aspirational FOMO is our desire to get something “bigger, better, faster, shinier.” It is our brain’s expectation of reward. It is dopamine, and it feels good. Herd FOMO, on the other hand, feels bad. It is an epinephrine-induced, fight-or-flight sensation of anxiety. “Everyone else is doing this; should I do it too?” Herd FOMO deprives us of agency – we lose the ability to decide for ourselves what is important.
This is nothing new, McGinnis pointed out: “FOMO has existed as long as people have roamed the Earth. It’s coded in our DNA. It’s a biological imperative.” For millennia, FOMO enabled our physical safety and survival. Maybe we stand a better chance against that lion if we stick together! Since then, FOMO has evolved to center on perceived emotional safety – and that evolution has accelerated in the past twenty years. When McGinnis was in business school, “life was easier” – namely, because there was no social media. In fact, after completing his summer internship in Prague, where text messaging was far more popular than it was in the United States, McGinnis remembered dismissively telling his classmates that texting would never catch on. Now, we live in a world with infinitely more social input.
Therefore, it is imperative that we “stay in touch with the triggers of FOMO,” as they have become increasingly abundant. Social media filters what we see, and shows us a highly curated version of the world around us. For that reason, McGinnis has deleted most social media from his cell phone, except for LinkedIn and Instagram (because he does “have to have some joy in life”). He also turns off cell phone notifications to compartmentalize the influx of digital triggers. For McGinnis, beating FOMO boils down to challenging oneself. Stop for a second and ask, “Is this as good as it looks? Why do I want to do this? Where is my motivation coming from?”
The inventor of FOMO recommends three tactics to beat it. First, take 24 hours before making any major decision. Let the dopamine fade, and give yourself space to think calmly and rationally. Second, leverage the wealth of life experience you have built over the years. Reflect on what you liked and did not like the last time around, and use that to make smarter decisions this time. Third, meditate to stop your mind from spinning. With just 10 minutes every day, McGinnis said his likelihood “to freak out has declined by 90%.”
Above all, McGinnis urged HBS students: “Don’t live somebody else’s dream.” Succeeding in business school comes down to knowing the metrics for which you are optimizing. Have a clear sense of your values, use those values to prioritize, and evaluate how each opportunity fits into that prioritization scheme. McGinnis, for example, “lived in the library” as an undergraduate at Georgetown, so he optimized at HBS for meeting every single person in his class. It was exhausting, and it would not have been the right goal for many – but McGinnis clearly defined his personal Key Performance Indicator, and held himself accountable to it. What will be yours?
More than just the man who coined the term FOMO, Patrick McGinnis is an author, speaker, venture capitalist, expert entrepreneur, and the host of a thriving podcast. Listen to FOMO Sapiens wherever you get your podcasts, and pick up your copy of The 10% Entrepreneur and Fear of Missing Out.
Tim Ford (MBA ’25) is originally from New Jersey. He graduated from the University of Virginia with degrees in Commerce and Spanish, and completed an M.Phil. in Latin American Studies at the University of Cambridge. Prior to the HBS MBA, Tim worked in growth equity at TPG in San Francisco.
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