Speakers

Greg McKeown, Patrick McGinnis


Transcript

Greg McKeown 

I am delighted to have Patrick McGinnis here. Venture Capitalists extraordinary, but almost certainly best known for coining the term fear of missing out and an op-ed that you wrote, when you were at Harvard Business School. And we will get more to that. Just wrote a book FOMO. same name, same thing, but really trying to wrestle with this always universal problem that we all experience. It is a delight to have you on the show.

Patrick McGinnis  

It’s so great to be here, Greg, thanks for having me.

Greg McKeown  

So, let’s start at the beginning. For those that haven’t heard it, it’s hard to believe anybody hasn’t. But what is FOMO? Define it for us. And then tell us how it came to be.

Patrick McGinnis  

So, FOMO short for fear of missing out is an anxiety that we feel when we have the perception that there is something better out there than what we’re doing at the moment. And it is also stressed, it’s created by a concern that we may be excluded from a favorable group, activity or opportunity. Now, what does that really mean? it all means that in this time that we’re living in, and we look at our phones, we go online to LinkedIn, we see what other people are doing. And we think to ourselves, wow, I’m just, you know, what am I doing with my life, all these other people are doing things that are more interesting than I am. And I’m going to fall behind. And so that is a fundamental nature of FOMO. It’s something that has been part of the human experience for a long time in one form or another, but of course, the word itself comes from the year 2003. And the story behind FOMO is basically this. I was living in New York City, right out of college working in venture capital. And I lived through the tech, basically, implosion of 2000 2001. Basically overnight, all of these investments I had made went to zero. And then shortly thereafter, I was living in lower Manhattan and I lived through the 911 attacks. And so those two things combined really made me question whether or not the world as I saw it, whatever exists again, all the opportunity, the carefree times, they just felt like they would never come back. And so, as a result, when I went up to Boston in 2002, I decided that I wanted to basically live every day like it was my last and Harvard Business School is an extraordinarily choice, rich environment. I grew up in a small town in Maine, Harvard Business School is kind of like the exact opposite. You know, it’s, there’s so much going on all the time, so much opportunity, so many jobs that you can apply for so many parties, so many trips, so many classes. It’s just everything is so overwhelming. And despite the fact there was no social media, because actually at that exact moment, Mark Zuckerberg was across the river coming up with the first version of the Facebook.com. In spite of the fact that we didn’t have that it didn’t matter, because we were all living together on campus, we could compare ourselves to each other, we could see what other people were doing, and we could try to keep up with them. And I was particularly sort of a professional and trying to do it all. No matter where I went, you know, it didn’t feel like I was in the right place. And I was flitting from here to there, trying to do it all to the point where I realized that actually, I wasn’t even having that much fun anymore. I just felt stressed out. And so I started calling that fear of missing out, shortened it to FOMO and wrote an article in the school newspaper that was called social theory at HBS, Mcginnises, to foes, all about FOMO. And another term called FOBO, that we’ll talk about later. And that was the first time it was ever used on the internet. And then 10 years later, it was in the dictionary.

Greg McKeown  

Oh, that’s such a great, you know, story to pull out at the party. You know, that’s like the that’s the mic drop moment and it went from my article and now it’s in the dictionary. What is the current dictionary definition? Maybe you already gave it.

Patrick McGinnis   

The dictionary tends to listen, there’s different ones because it’s in like four dictionaries. And then it’s in the urban dictionary. And so, I, as I wrote my book, I looked at all these to make sure that you know, people got it right. And what I have found is that, typically, people make it all about social media, social media, social media, but the reality is, social media is the fuel that builds the fire, right? But this is really something that is more than about social media, it’s part of our psychology, it’s part of our lives living inside of the society that we’re in social media is just the thing that amplified it and made it something that can be experienced all over the world.

Greg McKeown  

Yes, I know that you’ve written about this, just that there’s a historical context for the fear of missing out. You know, this is not just the last few years. So, give us the history. Go back for a while and walk us through, you know, the various forms of this over a longer period of time.

Patrick McGinnis  

Yeah, so If you go back to the earliest humans, you know, I, my podcast is called FOMO Sapiens. But it’s based on this idea that it’s the next evolution of, of course, early sort of humans. We had Homo sapiens, and we had Homer Erectus and Homo Habilis. And we go back a couple million years to the eastern part of Africa, where our sort of the earliest humans were wandering around. They had feelings of FOMO. No, they didn’t call it that, obviously. But they were keenly aware of what they needed to survive, what they didn’t have what somebody else had, how they would get that thing. They were also very prone to run in packs, of course, they stayed together. And so that feeling and about the fear of being left out of the group was very important, because that’s how they survived. Now, you fast forward and you think about different animal groups. And it’s interesting, if you’ve been to Africa and seen the wildebeest as they migrate. They all stick together to just as early humans did. It’s a survival tactic. It’s a swarm migration, where you make sure that you know, even if there’s a predator out there that they can only get one or two of your species, they can’t kill everybody off, you know, and pick them off one by one. So, these things are inside of our sort of DNA. It’s part of our evolutionary biology. Then you fast forward to, you know, some of the financial crises that we’ve had over the years things like the, the Dutch tulip, sort of situation in back in the 1600s. And you look at the 2009, and, and all these other things. So, these things have happened. Financial bubbles have always had an element of FOMO. And then that my favorite example, though, of how we’ve had this in our society is if you go back to the to the phrase keeping up with the Joneses, a lot of people don’t realize there was actually a comic strip called keeping up with the Joneses, about a family that was trying to basically keep up with their very flashy next door neighbors. And that family was actually called the McGinnis family, which is incredible coincidence, and I don’t claim that we’re related, but obviously, I’m not the first McGinnis to feel FOMO. But what happened, of course, what happened, of course, is that the internet took the things that we were feeling, you know, with the ability to easily compare ourselves to our next door neighbors or, or to the group around us, they took those things and they amplified them and made us made them global so that I can compare myself to my friends. Sure, but I can also compare myself to you, Greg, because, you know, if I follow your social media, I can say, well, Greg’s book is doing so great. And oh my goodness, what if mine doesn’t do well, and we can compare ourselves to celebrities. And of course, when we see things online, we are seeing the perfect version of the story with all the filters and all of the editing. And so that creates feelings of inferiority and stress that contribute to our FOMO and have made this thing something that is really part of our society. 55% of people say they feel FOMO when they’re away from social media and news because we’re bombarded with information all day long. And when we get away from it, we feel the stress.  

Greg McKeown  

That’s interesting. That means that we feel FOMO when we are on social media, but we’re also feeling it when we’re not on social media because of what we might be missing out on.

Patrick McGinnis  

Precisely, we’ve been conditioned now. And this is something I think, you know, you’ve talked a lot about as well. We’ve been conditioned to want that drip feed of information stimulus. And so, we go and get it. And then when we get it, it makes us feel bad. So, it’s a very unhelpful feedback loop that takes us away from all the things we should be doing.

Greg McKeown  

I remember talking to somebody who said, Well, my daughter when she goes into the shower, puts her phone in a plastic bag so that she can stay in touch. That’s the fear of missing out right there?

Patrick McGinnis  

Absolutely. And that’s why roughly 90% of millennials sleep with their phone right next to them, because we our phones have become our connection to the world. And so of course, you know, that is something that’s a learned behavior, right? We didn’t have those 15 years ago, but it’s a learned behavior. And so of course, they are designed as we all know, the you know, the attention economy is designed to get us to do exactly that. We’re on this constant feed of information stimulus and then that’s why somebody would bring their phone into the bathroom, I’ve never heard that before. That’s an incredible story.

Greg McKeown  

Well, and I’ll give you another one because I was asked to do an intervention and on the Steve Harvey show and so they found somebody who was doing too much, stretched too thin. And I went to her home, and we’re looking around the whole house and you’re trying to get a sense of who she is and what her struggles are. And, and when we go into a bedroom, I say, Okay, well, where do you keep your phone? And she said, Well, under my pillow. Yeah. So that means that she literally wakes up every time anyone emails or texts her, responds, and then tries to go back to sleep all night long, literally true. 

Patrick McGinnis

Oh, my goodness. 

Greg McKeown

It’s shocking. But here’s what I think is a little funny. I’ve shared that story with quite a lot of groups. And there’s typically an audible groan in the room. Oh, my goodness. And I think what’s intriguing is the self-righteousness of all of us in that moment. And I asked the group, I’m like, Well, where do you put your phone? And of course, the answer is what you already said, which is right by my bedside table. I mean, it’s like they’re 12 inches healthier. It’s not really any different than that, like, oh, I’ve got this completely under control. I’ve got a full foot away from my ear, instead of right underneath, is this healthiest is a form of madness. How can you weigh in?

Patrick McGinnis  

So, here’s what’s going on with that one, because I asked the same question when I talk to audiences, and I get the same response. So, this is, you know, our unscientific poll that we just ran shows that we’re seeing the same trends. But what is going on? Right. This is the part that’s so fascinating, it’s that you ask people why. And they say, Well, I use the phone as an alarm clock. And so, the phone is the Trojan horse, it gets it into your room and then you wake up in the middle of the night and sitting there so you pick it up because oh, what if I got a text or whatever? You know, what if Anna Kendrick just tweeted you know, we all love Anna. But here’s the problem is that it puts you in a very bad spot. And actually, what I do, you know, I know you’ve had Arianna on your show is that I actually have one of her phone bits. So, I went to Thrive and they gave me a phone bed. And I keep it in my kitchen. And I put my phone there at night and I leave it in the other room. And let me tell you something, it’s the best thing I ever did. Because I used to check my phone at four in the morning. And when you do, you can’t get back to sleep. And so, it makes a huge difference. And it’s one of those things. It’s one of those easy hacks that can really transform not just your night’s sleep, but your whole mindset.

Greg McKeown  

So, talk about what are the best practical methods for either overcoming or managing FOMO.

Patrick McGinnis  

There’s his idea of JOMO and joy is somehow the antidote to FOMO and I think it’s an interesting idea. And it’s been very popular in social media because we like easy solutions, don’t we? We like to say, you know, you have a problem. Here’s this really quick way to solve your big problem, and JOMO is great. It’s a great concept. I’m not against the concept. Obviously, it’s a beautiful idea.

Greg McKeown  

You don’t think it’s the solution. That’s what you just told me. You said, No, I reject JOMO as the solution to FOMO. You’ve thought about it; you don’t like it? It’s a good idea, but not the solution.

Patrick McGinnis  

Let me tell you why. JOMO is a little like Italy. It’s a place I like to visit, but I still have to get on the plane to get there. You have to buy the ticket. You have to board the plane, you have to travel, you have to do the work to get there. You can’t just say I’m in Italy, and suddenly you aberrate there. Also, the idea that somebody is feeling so much JOMO that they have to post about it on social media kind of tells you what the whole thing is about. It’s a very ego expressive concept. And so, if you truly feel JOMO, if you feel that sense of detachment and you really don’t care, you probably would not have your phone in your hand. Right. So that’s why I think it’s a it’s a great concept. I think it’s great for little things. I don’t think it really works for the big things in life. But what I like about it is it gives us a word that expresses the place that we desire to go, which is a place where we’re actually making decisions based on what we truly want. And we’re able to miss out on the things that we don’t want. So that’s how I think about JOMO in the context of FOMO.

Greg McKeown  

Yes, and so if JOMO isn’t it, you know, that might be a nice sort of kind of an end state or an alternative state, but it isn’t really the solution. What are the practical solutions that people can go and immediately try? 

Patrick McGinnis  

So, when it comes to FOMO, one very important part of figuring out how to overcome your FOMO is figuring out which decisions require you to actually spend time thinking about them, and which decisions don’t actually demand or deserve your attention. Now, what does that mean? What it means is that there’s a lot of people who have an opportunity in front of them something really sort of minor. Should I go to the store and buy cupcakes for the family? Should I watch this TV show? Should I, you know, all kinds of little things, we should go to this party. And they’re not important things. These are things you will not remember, in a week, maybe a month, but yet you can spend precious time and energy agonizing over them. Now, why do we do that? Number one, we do that because when we feel stress and anxiety, we make even the little things feel much bigger than they are. Number two, is that sometimes it can be a really sort of counterproductive, but yet convenient form of procrastination. I don’t want to deal with the big thing. So, let me spend the next seven hours dealing with my FOMO about you know whether I’m going to go to this restaurant or that one, right, so that’s a really important base level sort of thing to keep in mind as you feel these feelings, right? So, when it comes to the little things, and I made a TED talk about this called How to make faster decisions. What I tell people is, if something you’re not is something that you’re not going to remember in a week or a month and it’s not going to cost you any money, and there’s no S\sort of implications for your health and well-being, don’t waste time on it, simply flip a coin. And then you’ll know. So, when you’re feeling FOMO, about something that’s not important, which doesn’t happen very often, by the way, you make the most of your decisions all day long without having any of these issues. But if it’s something minor, and you’re just wavering, and it really doesn’t matter, don’t waver, don’t waste time flip a coin, I do something called Ask the watch. Like, for example, if I’m thinking should I have the chicken or the fish, I basically make the left hand of my watch the chicken, the right hand, the fish, I looked down at where the second hand is at that very moment, and my decision is made for me. But the purpose of this is simply to take yourself out of the deliberation, because you are the one who’s injecting the fear and the anxiety into something that doesn’t really matter. So that’s the little things in life now when we get to the big things, and FOMO that is where you want to spend the time so you know, things like, what should I do in terms of my career, should I become an entrepreneur and quit my job? Should I move to a new city Should I, you know, date this person who I always thought was kind of interesting, these kind of things that matter, right, they’re gonna have medium to long term implications there, in order to overcome your FOMO, you have to attack it at its core. Now, earlier on when I gave you the definition of FOMO, I told you that it’s number one, the perception that there’s something better out there than what you’re doing right now. That’s A. And B, I t’s a fear of being left out of a group activity. And so that’s what you have to do you have to attack each one of those one by one to attack the first one. This perception, you have to ask yourself, is what I’m perceiving real? Or is it all in my head because oftentimes, perception can be deception, something It looks so great on the surface, it looks so great on Instagram in real life doesn’t live up to what you think it is. And so getting into a deep strategy of due diligence, uncovering facts, looking at this thing critically, writing it down, you know exactly what you find so that you can then examine that show it to other people get feedback, just like you’re making an investment or something because as I think of decisions, like I think of investments, you are making a decision because you expect to return just as you would with an investment. So, you want to get into this space where you can uncover the asymmetry between what is happening and what is in your head. That’s the first part. If you have done that, and you still think you want to do something, it’s like you know, I want to move to Denver. I think you looked into it, you can afford it, you can find a house, you could find a job you visited, you spent time you think it’s interesting. The second part you need to do is ask yourself, Am I doing this for me? Or am I doing this because I’m following the herd Am I doing this because I don’t want to let somebody down because I feel guilty. Really uncover the motivations, that part of the fear of missing out and once you have dealt with both of those, even if you’re still on the fence, you should go ahead and do it. Because at that point, you have done the due diligence, you know, what you’re looking at, you know that perception isn’t deception, you know that your intentions are true. And therefore, what’s holding you back is indecisiveness and your fear, and you know, we cannot have riskless decisions, but if you’ve done the work and taken out the fear and replaced with facts, you should feel comfortable moving ahead.

Greg McKeown   

Underneath this social media sort of surface use of the word FOMO. There’s this other deeper comparison and competition, isn’t it? That seems to be what you’re saying. And so, if I were feeling competitive and comparative right now in my life with somebody, what do I do about that?

Patrick McGinnis  

Yeah, it most definitely is. And so, if you think about why our modern age is so overrun with FOMO, it’s obviously tremendous amount of information, right? We’re just we’re in a deluge of information constantly, data points about what people are doing, right? We’re incredibly interconnected. And so, we can trace people’s lives and see what they’re up to, or at least what they say they’re up to what they’re telling us they’re up to, in our neighborhoods, but across the world, right. And so that provokes reference anxiety. It’s this idea that we see other people’s achievements and accomplishments and activities, and we feel like we’re not good enough. Now, the really damaging part of reverence anxiety isn’t just that you think other people are so great. And potentially you’re inflating their greatness to more than it really is. But at the same time, the really dangerous thing you’re doing is you’re devaluing what you do have, right? So I’ll say, Well, my friend from school just became the CEO of a company, or, or their book just hit the New York Times bestseller list. And I feel this FOMO in this competition with them. And I’m not appreciating all the good that I have. And so, part of the solution to that, obviously comes with thinking critically about what you’re seeing and saying, you know, am I projecting right now. The second thing is to be thankful and to make sure you make time to be appreciative of what you do have. But the third thing and the thing that I think makes FOMO actually a very positive quality in some scenarios is that our FOMO helps us to uncover things that we may actually want to be doing. So, you see that friend who opens the bakery. You see that friend who starts the entrepreneurial venture, and if you feel FOMO, what you may be learning in that moment is actually, maybe you truly do want to do that thing. And if you do the work to figure out if it’s real, maybe you should explore it. I’m not saying quit your job and jump in full time, the whole point of my first book, The 10% Entrepreneur was that we should do things incrementally. But your FOMO can be a powerful tool to opening your eyes to some of the things that you maybe haven’t tried in life. But maybe you should explore.

Greg McKeown  

How would somebody do that? So, they’re feeling really that feeling some form of jealousy? And you’re saying, well, there could be an upside to that. There could be something that at least a positive way of handling that sensation, that temptation, give me in like, really incremental steps. What would the first thing someone would do be?

Patrick McGinnis  

Yeah, so I’ll tell you my own story. The whole reason why I got into this stuff that I’m doing today was That I lived through the financial crisis in 2008. I was working at AIG, my company blew up, my stock fell 97%. And I was lost. And I didn’t know what to do with my life, and I was floundering. And I had a friend who was investing in startups, not a lot of money, little checks here and there. And I remember I don’t like to say the word jealousy because I think it’s, it’s deeper than that. Jealousy is sort of when you almost like resent the other person a little bit. 

Greg McKeown

Sure. 

Patrick McGinnis

This was not that it was more about, I felt this sort of insecurity and yearning and feeling that I wasn’t good enough. And I listened to myself and over a period of time, and then I realized one day, the reason I’m feeling these things is because I actually want to do these things too.

Greg McKeown  

It named something for you. That was currently out of reach but was still real for you and right for you.

Patrick McGinnis  

Exactly. And the beauty of these things, is that if you can find you know, we all yearn you know, it’s like every Disney movie starts with that character singing a song about yearning, right. But if you can identify tangibly what you’re yearning for, then you can actually take the steps you need to actually do it. So that’s what I did. I said, geez, I want to do that too. But I need to find a way to do it. And so, I started looking for opportunities to invest. And then I realized, like, being an angel investor is actually one of the few careers where you’re writing checks to other people for a really long time before you make any money. And so, I started getting creative. And yes, investing a little bit of money, but sometimes just investing my time in trading it for equity in companies and became getting involved in different ways that were more flexible. And so as I did that, I started learning and I realized, wow, you know, I’ve actually done this thing that I felt all this FOMO over that I maybe even thought I couldn’t do or it was insecure about and I did it in a very incremental way. I didn’t quit my job and try to do this full time. I didn’t try to go out and raise $5 million and make 50 Investments the first year, I just dipped a toe in. And why is that so critical with this kind of thing. Because when you’re feeling FOMO, you never truly know if it lives up to expectations. And when you go in bit by bit, put a toe in the water, see if it actually lives up to what you think it is uncover that information asymmetry you find out, if it’s cracked up to what you thought it would be. And if it is, then you can do more and more and more of it and increase the amount of time you spend on it.

Greg McKeown  

I think that’s a really important point. Because it seems to me that when we move into jealousy of other people, it’s like we forget that they’ve made a whole series of tradeoffs in order to get to that place. And if we divorce the tradeoffs from the endpoint, and then we just say, Oh, I want that endpoint. Well, of course, you want all the benefit without any of the cost. And so therefore, we can do this very, I think, unhelpful equation where we say, Okay, I would like to be a best-selling author like that person, I’d like to be an investor like that person, I would like to be famous like that person, but also an amazing Dad, Mom. You know, we just want everything that everyone else has done at their level of being exceptional without recognizing that each person has actually had to make different kinds of sacrifices, different kinds of tradeoffs, but we can’t have everything everyone is doing. You cannot be distinctive at everything all of the time.

Patrick McGinnis  

Completely. And then there’s this other crazy dynamic, which is that okay, so you try to do some of those things, and you haven’t thought critically about them. You don’t even really know what they entail or what it would feel like to be successful. And let’s say that you sacrifice a lot to do this thing. And then you get there you’re doing it, and you realize this isn’t even actually making you happy. You spent time and energy living somebody else’s dream. That is the place you never want to end up, right. And so that’s where jealousy if you let your FOMO turn into jealousy, you can end up in such a terrible spot because you don’t have agency in your decisions when you’re jealous. Somebody else is driving the boat. It’s all the feelings that are coming from outside.

Greg McKeown

I see sort of two angles for what we can talk about here. We can talk about jealousy and how to get out of it. It seems like there’s a thread here about testing the waters. It is just age old, classic sin of jealousy, or whether it’s tapping something that’s deeper, and nobler, you know, your own sense of mission and accomplishment. That seems like the choices you’re laying before us. Somebody listening to this, if they want to try and assess this, what kind of small efforts can they make concretely?

Patrick McGinnis

The wonderful thing about our modern time is that we can do so many things without spending any money and we can do them very flexibly. So, go back 50 years, you’re a lawyer, you’re a doctor, you’re a teacher, you’re a homemaker. That was the label that you were given. And that’s what you did. And you maybe you had a leisure activity. But that was it. We live in a time where thanks to the internet, thanks to the changes in our job market, thanks to the flexibility that is given to us by technology, we can all be many things. You can be a writer, dad, podcaster, you can be an actress, singer, podcaster, startup founder, you know, there’s all these ways that we can do this, right? And we don’t have to limit ourselves to one thing now, how do you actually do that? So, let’s say for example, that you want to have a podcast right? Because podcasts are it’s a hot space, right? There’s a lot of people starting podcasts, but it’s a lot of work, but a lot of people don’t realize that so they say I want to have a podcast, okay. There’s a very easy way to actually figure out number one, if you like it. Number two, if you’re good at it. Number three, if you can be successful at it for very little money. Thankfully, the technology behind the podcast is not expensive. You could actually start recording shows. You can put them out there, you can maybe sell some ads, you can get some guests on, you can figure out, do I like this is am I good at this? Are people interested in hearing, you can try and fail and revise and pivot. And then you can see where you go next, do you continue going? Or do you simply, you know, decide to try something else. And so, having that experimental mindset, it goes back to as many people who are listening, I hope have read The Lean Startup. But if you haven’t checked that out as well, or The 10%, entrepreneur, which is, you know, kind of my mindset on it, but it’s this idea of, because it’s so inexpensive to innovate. And because the stakes are so low. You can think of these all these projects as experiments, test and see whether or not they’re successful and then make another decision about where you go forward.

Greg McKeown  

I love this idea about turning FOMO into a positive. I mean typically when people think about it, they simply say, okay, that’s a bad thing, but we’re pretty well stuck in the cycle. Maybe I should get out but I’m not going to. That’s how FOMO shows up. You’re saying it is pretty inherent in us. You get to choose whether it serves you or hurts you. Is that right?

Patrick McGinnis  

That’s absolutely right. And as somebody who obviously having invented the word FOMO has a lot of FOMO, the thing that I have found that allows me to live a life full of curiosity and experimentation, but in a way that is sustainable, and where I still have focus is to recognize my FOMO and then channel it into productive experiments that allow me to choose the things that I do and the things that I don’t do.

Greg McKeown  

Productive FOMO give me you know, beyond the obvious ones, what are the best methods for creating productive FOMO?

Patrick McGinnis    

I think it’s very important to listen to what’s going on in your head and pay attention to how you spend your time. Let me give an example. I’m very interested in politics. Always have been, always will be and we live in a time where politics is a big topic, there’s a lot going on. Obviously, a lot of us feel very emotional. But we’re not necessarily going to be able to quit our jobs and run for senator or congress. We’re not necessarily have the money to give a lot to a candidate, right? We’ve got to find ways to engage in these things, rather than just sitting at home and yelling at the television. And so one thing you can do, for example, is start spending time with people who are in politics and start to figure out where your talents and time can engage into different things, whether it’s getting involved with a candidate’s campaign, whether it’s getting involved with a nonprofit, whether it’s going on the board of your local party, it’s all kinds of ways to engage. But the important thing when you’re trying to deal with your FOMO and I call this going all in some of the time is finding a way that’s sustainable, that you can invest your time and that you can learn and you can then decide if you want to spend more time on it. But more importantly and this is the absolutely if you remember nothing else from what I’m telling you today. Remember this. Find a way to engage in these things in which you truly have an impact. Because the reason that you want to spend time on these things isn’t just to be a bystander, you want to be a protagonist on your own life. And so get involved, have a seat at the table, try to shape it to your dreams and hopes and whims and, and   as you do so, you will actually this is the fun part is you will able to be able to then tailor your experience in such a way that it better fits the contours of the rest of your life. And so, you can say, you know, I am best at coming up with ideas. I don’t want to be calling people to raise money. And you can start to shape your own involvement in a way that makes you happiest. And as you learn as you go about sort of building your involvement, you’ll have more information that’ll give you the data you need to optimize how you’re involved. But that’s how I recommend people. They sort of think of themselves as an entrepreneur that’s building their own company, which is their life. And that company has a bunch of product lines which the things that they want to be doing the things that they love.

Greg McKeown  

You’re saying to use your life to prototype your life to experiment with your life to use each day as a chance to go, okay, does it work? Does it not work and so on?

Patrick McGinnis  

Yes, I think we were raised in a time many of us when you weren’t, you weren’t able to do a lot of different things. And then now we can do many different things. And so, there’s been, you know, there’s always this tension between being very focused and great at one thing, and then you know, doing a million things and being unfocused. And I’m saying, it doesn’t have to be one or the other, you can find a middle ground where you have meaningful involvement in different things that, but you must tailor them and thoughtfully to your strengths and your life and the realities of that life. And then when you do get involved, you know, don’t just be a bystander, get involved, help drive the car help make a difference, because that’s truly the only way you know, whether you’re an investor or an employee of a company or you know, somebody is involved in some project, unless you have ownership. You can’t ever accumulate any you know, wealth, whether that’s psychological wealth or financial wealth.

Greg McKeown    

What is concept, a term a mindset, mental model that you have found to be really useful, but not many people have heard off?

Patrick McGinnis  

Ohh That’s a good question. Greg, you’re so tough. This is a question I’ve never had before. I’ll tell you my thought process is that I’ve traveled to over 100 countries. And so, a lot of the best things that I’ve ever learned came from other places where people look at the world very differently than us. I love to travel, and my work used to take me all over the place. There was a little FOMO happening, but as I traveled, I would always identify countries nearby and what I love about travel, I like to go to places that are quite different than, you know, my, my home in the US. So, places that are pretty far off the beaten path. Because I love the idea of the adventure of not knowing what’s going to happen to me and then having to react to that. It’s a powerful way of growth, I think.

Greg McKeown  

What’s an article that you’ve read multiple times, it’s valuable enough to you that you go back to it.

Patrick McGinnis  

I’ve read a number of times, Martin Luther King’s letter from the Birmingham Jail. It’s been something that I just think, the character of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the idea that we should call upon ourselves to be a message to other people, and we should dig deeply and think about the big picture and how we can all work together achieve change. I think that letter captures that spirit really powerfully and effectively. So, I’ve read it on a number of occasions, you know, both in school and then privately. 

Greg McKeown  

When you think about that question for you, then what do you want your message to be? I suppose we could say it’s FOMO. But I bet it’s not really that, it’s something else.

Patrick McGinnis  

Yeah, here’s my message. And I think it’s a wonderful question. Because it’s something I think a lot about, I grew up in a really wonderful place, but very middle class, sort of very simple, good people. And then I went to the wider world, I went to Georgetown University, and everybody wanted to be an investment banker. And so, I did too. And because I wanted to make more money, and so I went and did that, and it was fine. And then I went off to business school and had a great experience. But then I went back into finance, because I just felt like I had to do that. And I had to work in private equity. Even though when I signed my first job out of college, I had a pit in my stomach because I knew I wasn’t gonna like it. And I lasted six months, and then my next company blew up. And I ended up having a lot of health issues from all the stress and so after all those things happened, I finally said, this treadmill that I have been trying to keep on that keeps throwing me off of it is not a good place to be. But you know, I also want to have a career and be successful and work in business like so how can I marry these things together? How can I you know, have a successful career but at the same time, have agency and like make my own path and choose what I want to do? So that’s what my work has been whether it’s you know, 10% entrepreneur or fear of missing out, what I try to give people in my work is a set of tools and a mindset that allows them to say, you don’t just have to choose one path, you can create something that is unique to you. You can do that by leveraging technology, you can be flexible and creative and experimental. And in doing so, you’ll be able to build something that really means a lot to you. And you can also be successful at the same time. So that’s the value that I like to give people. It’s a diversification of experiences of their finances and an opportunity to learn every day. 

Greg McKeown 

You’re saying you don’t have to do what you’ve been doing. You don’t have to be chained in that iron cage. You can try in small, achievable, believable ways, alternatives that might grow into something significant in game changing. 

Patrick McGinnis

Exactly. And I think where a lot of people get stuck is thinking I have to change everything. I’ve got to quit my job and start a company or else I’ll never be an entrepreneur. And by the way, for some people, that’s the right play, and I would never sort of discouraged somebody if they can afford to do it or if they have that big idea, but for the rest of us where we didn’t have that eureka moment, let’s take the little eureka moments and let’s do something with them.

Greg McKeown  

The big change can come from these small micro changes. 

Patrick McGinnis

Exactly. 

Greg McKeown  

Let me ask you this question. Is there a favorite term or concept or mindset that not a lot of people have heard of, that you think is really useful?

Patrick McGinnis  

These are hard. You should have sent that one to me in advance.

Greg McKeown  

While you’re thinking let me brainstorm with you here, you use the term earlier reference anxiety, which I thought was delightful. As you’ve been doing the writing for this book, what’s a favorite concept for you that somebody who hasn’t been to business school might not come across? 

Patrick McGinnis  

My favorite takeaway from business school? I’ll never forget when I took this class, there’s a professor called Jen Rifkin, who teaches advanced competitive strategy. And, you know, I’d worked. It’s not like I hadn’t had a career in business before business school, but I always thought of everything in a very siloed manner, sort of like, well, you have your sales function, you have your marketing function, you have your HR function. And what he really brought home to us in every case, every day of class in a really powerful way was that it was the integration of these things that made the difference. So, you can have, you know, lots of great ingredients that you put into the soup, but it’s the combination of all of them that creates the power, right? It’s like you add more and more sort of fit between all these things, and you design them thinking about each other, and so that there’s a thoughtful sort of assemblage. And then of course, the sum is worth much more than its parts. And so that was the concept that meant so much to me out of school. I never thought about business that way before. And I guess as I think about it now, and sort of the approach to life that I’m advocating, which is this idea of trying all these things, and then learning and then deciding to use them to branch out and diversify. And at the fundamental root of that, they must obviously have harmony between them, you know, you don’t want to do something that has no connection to the rest of the things, I really talk about the fact that we want to as we explore new things, we want to leverage what we’re already doing, right? So, I do a million different things. But there are themes through them that combine them all that when I do one thing, it serves two or three purposes. And so, I think that sort of fits really well with why I’ve been able to take this approach to life. Because if you think about your core strengths, and then you ground with many things that you do within those core strengths, and then you use your new activities to build out new strengths alongside of them, the whole enterprise is integrated.

Greg McKeown  

Yes, that the word that comes to mind as you’re describing, that is coherence. 

Patrick McGinnis

Yes. 

Greg McKeown

It’s how these pieces fit together and that we can build if we’re thoughtful about it a coherent life. So instead of it just being a piece of this and a piece of that based upon what other people are doing based upon a reactive orientation towards the world, we can carefully select the right routine and ritual for us each morning, we can build the right relationships that help us to become a certain kind of person and be a certain kind of person. We can read a certain kind of literature, so that we are learning more of the kinds of things that will support the overall person that we’re trying to become and contribution we’re trying to make. And it’s the bringing together of those different tactics into a strategic hole that actually has game changing power. 

Patrick McGinnis

Most definitely. 

Greg McKeown

While you were at Harvard Business School, I was applying business school to and I don’t talk that much about this, but as I came to apply, I felt this the logical part of me saying well just apply to 10 schools, even if you’re presumptuous enough to try and get into the top 10 schools. You should apply everywhere. Because you’re increasing your probability of success somewhere, of course, but every time I came to do it, there was this other part of me. I won’t say it’s the emotional part because it didn’t feel emotional. It was very calming and grounding, but was just different that said, No, you only apply one place. And the place for me was Stanford Business School. And I did apply only there. And I didn’t get in. And that wasn’t some great surprise to me. But then I thought, Okay, what do I do, and I thought, the same sensation you should apply again, and only there. And eventually, I got in. And it was a game changing moment for me because I could feel that this was a path I was specifically meant to be on. I felt definitely led in my own life, to pursue that along the way, one of the classic rite of passage essays that every GSB student has to answer is the following. What matters most to you? And why? And I had a chance to answer that question fully and thoroughly twice. So, I’m giving you a little lead time there because I want you to answer the same question what matters most to you? And why?

Patrick McGinnis  

I love that question. And I’m gonna say the answer to that is 

Greg McKeown

Real answer.

Patrick McGinnis

Real answer. Obviously, family and friends are very important. When I think about what I would like my legacy to be what I think I can give to this world and contribute. I think I can bring an optimistic, yet realistic approach to doing things in the world that allow us all to engage in a way that we feel valued, but we also contribute something to our society, and that we help to make the world a better place.

Greg McKeown  

Tell me that in half the words.

Patrick McGinnis  

Okay. I care about finding ways to give myself and others an opportunity to actually do the things they want to do.

Greg McKeown  

Yep, good. Half the words.

Patrick McGinnis  

I like that essential. 

Greg McKeown  

Again. 

Patrick McGinnis  

Oh, half of that. 

Greg McKeown  

Yeah. 

Patrick McGinnis  

Oh, agency.

Greg McKeown  

Oh, good, good. You like cut through the chase. You’re like, I’m not doing this again. One word, agency. Okay. Why does agency matter so much to you?

Patrick McGinnis  

I think it’s because in 2008, when I felt I did not have agency in my life, after the financial crisis, I had done all the things I was supposed to do. I had gone on the treadmill. I had gone to Harvard Business School, and I woke up one day, you know, working for a bankrupt company. I couldn’t get out of bed. Because I was sick with stress. I was night sweats for months, I had blurry vision for months, I felt sick. And I asked myself, you know, you’ve done everything you’re supposed to do, and yet you have no control over what’s happening to you. And that was the minute I remember it so well. I said to myself, this will never happen again. Next time, your success or your failure will be driven by you. You will diversify yourself. You’ll find the thing you should be doing, and you will have agency and what I didn’t know at the time. And what has been so interesting and kind of cool to realize is how much happiness you get out of it. When you feel that you are able to pursue the path that you want to choose. I think it’s so amazing to see these people who have tons and tons of money, but no agency and they’re miserable. You see people who have very little money, but tons of agency, and they’re happy. And so, I think that, for me is an essential quality of a well lived life.

Greg McKeown  

In Joseph Conrad’s the Heart of Darkness. There’s a character who wakes up and says, oh, the horror, the horror. That feels like that moment you’re describing. This violation of something deep inside of you. the very essence of you, right, your ability to choose your agency. You said never I will devote myself to never being in this position. Because the horror the horror.

Patrick McGinnis  

Yeah. I think that’s a very powerful way of framing. And of course, we all know that making change is so difficult. Most people won’t make the change without having to go through something like that. And so, when life forces us to make these changes when it forces us to not be stuck in the FOMO, but actually focus on what really matters, and then make the changes, we need to get it, we’re given that opportunity. Do we rise to the occasion or don’t we? And it reminds me of this concept that if people haven’t heard about it, I think it’s a really valuable concept, especially for the times we’re in of post-traumatic growth. We think that when something bad happens to us or to somebody, that they either go back to normal after they’ve recovered, or they stay mired in this space, where they have post-traumatic stress, but in fact, psychologists have discovered this concept of post traumatic growth, we can be better we can learn from the bad things that happened to us, and we can actually come out ahead and so for me, as I think back to that discovery, and what I did with what I learned in that moment, that’s what happened to post traumatic growth. And in fact, this morning, I was in a really good mood and I was thinking, you know, how am I in such a good mood at a time when the world is really tough, right? And it’s not like I’m happy all the time. It’s not like I’m smiling every minute through this, but I felt really good. And I generally have. And I realized that I now view adversity as a chance to grow. Because I believe so much in the post traumatic growth concept. 

Greg McKeown  

You didn’t just get stronger when you went through that experience. Yes, that happened. But you also gained a second asset, which is the ability to see uncertainty, volatility, challenge adversity as a real opportunity, you know, that now, in a way you couldn’t have done without going through this and growing through this before? 

Patrick McGinnis  

Most definitely. And I don’t sugarcoat this. I think people when they go through really tough times, you know, the wrong thing to say to them is, well, this will be a learning experience, right? It’s like, no, there’s not a lot of empathy in that. But I do think that what we can do as we support people, is to help them and to help ourselves by the way to see where we can gain something where we can grow, we can become better people, we can become better friends or partners or parents, or business people. There’s all these different ways because of course, you are going to lose things and you’re going to feel terrible, and you are going to suffer. But there’s so much example. There’s so many stories of people who can turn these things around. And so, I personally believe in that I’ve lived that on my own life. And so now I see these opportunities, or these challenges very differently than I used to.

Greg McKeown  

Well, and it’s interesting too to connect the dots here. I get why agency matters so much to you. But there’s another layer underneath this because what you want is to help other people avoid that pain point that was so defining for you. You’re trying to help other people to have this highly valuable asset at their disposal, to not be defined by their circumstances to not be trapped, but to be able themselves to always have agency and to be able to use that agency.

Patrick McGinnis  

Yes. And this is a concept where, listen, I’m not a fan of get rich quick schemes. I’m not a fan of charlatans, and people that sort of collect money from others telling them that everything’s going to be easy in life. That’s not the play at all here. But I also do feel like I’ve stumbled upon something that is supported by science that that actually works. And I see so many people that I know, you know, I go back then I’m sure you do, too. Greg, you go back to your business school reunion. And there are many, many people there. And Charles Duhigg wrote an article about this for the New York Times. He was a year ahead of me in business school and wrote this beautiful article about how he went to his class reunion at HBS. And how many of his classmates had achieved exactly what they set out to do, and they seem bored or disenchanted, even though they had accumulated the wealth and gotten the job and had everything you know, in the family. In the house and the dog in the house in the Hamptons. They had all the stuff. But the level of sort of pleasure or fulfillment they derived out of it was, you know, it was to him surprising. And so, I just don’t want people to be in that space. You know, what, what is the point? And so, I see that so much, you know, with people that I’ve known over the years, they’ve done amazing things, and they just don’t seem to derive any pleasure out of it. And so, I don’t want to do that.

Greg McKeown  

Well, a combination of observing that and other people but also back to this moment when the whole charade the vanity of old broke for you. You’re like, it’s actually a con. The con that if you go off to these things, you will gain freedom and agency. Agency derives itself from some other place. And I think what I’m hearing from you is like it deep down, matters to me to try and speak to that and to write to that, and to give voice to that, because otherwise a lot of people will end up a lot less happy, and a lot more trapped than they need to.

Patrick McGinnis  

That is correct. And in fact, when I do hear from people who’ve taken these strategies, you know, I had a person recently who they left, they started a 10% venture, and they ended up going and doing it full time. And they wrote to me and said that I changed their life, which, you know, it’s a high honor. And so those notes, you know, they don’t come every day, but when you get them, you feel like, okay, I’ve actually done something that has an impact. And at the same time, it helps to remind me to do the same thing for myself, because, you know, it’s so easy to slip isn’t that, you know, it’s not like you, you make these changes, and you just stuck there and you know, it’s easy, of course, you have to stay on top of it every day, and make sure that you’re sticking to your own guns as well.

Greg McKeown  

As an essentialist, when I hear that one of the red flags for me is, well, isn’t there just a risk that somebody takes on way too many things? Yes, it’s flexible. But now they’re flexibly doing 10 things, 20 things and it becomes overwhelming for a different reason. What’s your reaction to that?

Patrick McGinnis  

Yeah, I’ve predicted you to ask me that. And I’m glad you did. Because I do think that there is a risk. And that’s why you have to be very honest with yourself and actually do a good job of vetting. So, the most important thing about this is learning how to say no, right? I say no, and I do a lot of these, but I say no to the vast, vast majority. And I only accept things that are new when I feel that I have the space and that they align sufficiently with my existing activities. And it creates almost like a network effect. But you’re right. The challenge here is that and so what you must do is start with just one and then learn and see. And then if you add another one, be very careful about setting the parameters of your involvement. And so that’s very much part of the design because I agree with you. At the end of the day, I sort of have a little rule for myself about things that I engage with, which is that yes, I have to understand the nature of the business that I get involved in. Yes, I have to know the people. But the third one, the one that keeps me honest is can I actually add value? In a business context? It would be you know, can I help get a new client? Can I help bring in a talent? Can I help come up with a strategic idea? And can I do that in a certain amount of time that I have available to myself? And if I cannot, then I don’t get involved, because then it’s clear that it’s just not for me. And so you have to be very honest with yourself, you have to be very rigorous and vigilant to make sure that you don’t over commit because then, you know, the worst part about this is if and it goes back to all of what we’re talking about is, I’m trying to tell you that you can design something that you’re going to want to do and you’re going to love. And what you don’t want to end up at is a place where these things that you’re supposed to love feel like work, right, then you know, you’ve over committed and when something starts to feel like work in a way that I don’t feel it’s sustainable. I will reconfigure my involvement.

Greg McKeown  

Gartner had a study that they did years ago about the data center, and they found that sort of 85% of your resources would be required for maintenance just to keep the data center that you have installed going. There’s this 15% of available resources that you can choose what to do with. And I think that’s about the right ratio for a lot of people in their lives right now that they have, you know, something in that range 85% of their life is already spoken for. But there’s this extra piece that they could choose what to do with right now. And you suggest in your answer, just then choose one thing with that. Don’t take that remaining 15%. When you have 15%, let’s say discretionary time, don’t try to splice and slice that 15% into 15 different things. Choose one thing that you’re going to use as a bat and an exploration. See what you think. Eliminate it entirely. If it’s not what you want to do and try another, or keep investing it and growing it does that sound right?

Patrick McGinnis  

That’s exactly right. And you may end up doing many more. But typically, what happens is you do one, you figure out the startup phase of that, depending on the nature of the activity is, you know, more than it would be when it’s sort of up and running. Maybe not. Maybe it continues to be that, but I say my, my concept is called 10%. Entrepreneurship, I think 10 per cents a good place to start. And the reason why I came up with that is I think about the tithe concept or in many religions around the world, including Islam and Christianity that this 10% Judeo Christian cultures is what we give to the church. And why is that? Well, it’s an amount that is meaningful, you can do something, but it doesn’t cause us to have to give up the rest of our lives. We can maintain it right. It’s sustainable.

Greg McKeown  

So, what you’re really suggesting is tithe entrepreneurship. 

Patrick McGinnis

Yeah. And it could be social. Oh, and the second reason why 10% appealed to me, I originally was going to be I wanted it to be 20%. But then I thought, ah, 20%, that just feels too high. And so, I started at 10. But I realized as I research that the average angel investor in the United States puts about 10% of their capital into entrepreneurial ventures. So that is sort of a market cleared level of sort of the risk and engagement that that people feel that they can make to entrepreneurial ventures. So, I thought that was just an interesting piece of data, that that sort of also made me feel like 10% was a good place to stop start.

Greg McKeown  

Well, and I just read recently that if you’re having trouble getting started with a project or finishing a project, a quick rule of thumb is just to cut your expectation in half cut your goal in half, so that you can actually make progress and get to completion rather than to half complete twice the size goal. So, I like that sensation of, you know, 10%. Okay, I think I can do that. I think that’s doable. 

Patrick McGinnis  

That’s pretty cool. I whenever I look at companies’ projections, I assume they’ll do about half of what they say they will do. So, it seems reasonable to me.

Greg McKeown  

Yes. Tell me. What haven’t we covered? What is it you would want to share and say something that matters to you that we haven’t discussed? 

Patrick McGinnis  

Yeah, I think one thing that I would like to bring up is this other concept that I invented way back when FOMO was invented, which is FOBO or fear of a better option. And that is something that I think is even more damaging, because you know, we’ve talked about FOMO there can actually be an upside to FOMO. FOBO fear of better option is optimization. It’s the idea that if we keep waiting, something better will come along. And so, whether we’re trying to make public policy or trying to pick where we’re going to go for our holiday or trying to come up with a strategy of our company, trying to optimize and hoping something better will come along, instead of being decisive, is very damaging. And so, you know, that’s an idea that I think it’s time has come to be more widely discussed. And I think it’s a major issue because it’s an affliction of affluence. And so, our society, even in a recession, we still have so much in our lives. And this goes back, of course, to the work that you’ve done, the great work you’ve done, and it gets us stuck in a place we’re so overwhelmed with choice that we can’t do anything. And so that is, you know, something I’ve thought a lot about what as well and have been working on and, and I think is an important part of the conversation.

Greg McKeown  

Well, in an environment where there’s an exponential increased number of options, you can learn literally anything online for free. You can learn about almost any place in the world, you have almost infinite array of entertainment options. Not saying they’re high quality, but there’s array of a huge array of them in such an environment to optimize, seems an almost absurd objective, an unreachable objective, how could you possibly optimize, you know, the very, very best place to go to the very, very best meal to eat? There’s just so many options. So what does somebody do if they are starting to feel that indecisiveness that grows out of it, that sense of not being satisfied because there’s a fear of better options? What can somebody do?

Patrick McGinnis  

What I’ve learned is that actually maximization in and of itself, isn’t the problem. The problem is your decision-making process, because when you have FOBO, you are collecting options, because you believe that option value in and of itself is kind of a goal. And so what you have to do when you when you’re dealing with these situations is you must be comfortable, letting go of everything that you can’t have, because when you choose just one thing, you can only have that you can’t have the rest. And so, the decision-making process that you have to engage with, I get into this in great detail. It’s really focused around choosing one thing by basically eliminating the other things permanently and not continually going back to them because when you have that feedback loop and you keep going back to the same options without ever excluding anything. That’s where you have the pathology. Gratitude is so important with FOBO because we only have FOBO because we have options, especially FOBO sort of increases when you have more wealth, and more success.  And so, when we have FOBO, feeling the gratitude and recognizing it is important.  But when we remember to feel grateful for the options that we have, and remember that a lot of people would really be happy to be in the spot we’re in. I think it’s a great way to ground our decision making because then we feel great about the outcome.

Greg McKeown  

Patrick, it’s been a real pleasure to have you on the podcast today, we all struggle with FOMO, we all struggle with FOBO. They may be first world problems, but that doesn’t make them less problems. And so, we still need a new mindset. And then with a new skill set, to be able to manage this reality well, and so I appreciate so much what you’re doing on Fomosapiens, on the podcast, in your new book FOMO, in The 10%, entrepreneur, but more than all of that and beyond all of that. This deep mission that you feel, I would say born of least personal experience, maybe pain, to help other people to recognize the choices they have to design a life that really matters to them. To me. That’s essential. So, thank you so much for your time. 

Patrick McGinnis

Thank you.