Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

What are you really missing out on?

You're home on a Friday night, scrolling through Instagram, ready to go to bed.

You see pictures on your timeline of a party you were invited to, but didn't go to. You were confident when you said no, but now you can't stop thinking about it, and you start feeling worse.

You have FOMO, or, Fear of Missing Out.

Coined in a Harvard Business School article, FOMO has become a global term to describe the decimating anxiety when thinking other people are having better, more fulfilling, experiences than you are. It's a natural, biological response, but that doesn't make it feel any better. Amplified by the rise of social media, #FOMO has become a cultural crisis--so what's the cure?

Patrick McGinnis, creator of the term FOMO, has been thinking about it for seventeen years--and he has a solution: decision-making. Learning to weigh the costs and benefits of your choices, prioritizing your decisions, and listening to your gut are central to silencing FOMO and its lesser-known cousin, FOBO: Fear of a Better Option. After all, don't you want to feel comfortable and confident in your decisions?

Written with self-evaluations throughout the book, Fear of Missing Out: Practical Decision Making in a World of Overwhelming Choice helps you ascertain and eliminate the parts of your life that are causing more anxiety than happiness.

So give this a read, and then go to that party, start that new book, create a new goal--or don't. Make that decision, and be confident in it: it's the first of many of its kind.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (p. ix)
• Section I Fear and Indecision in an Overwhelming World (p. xix)
• Chapter 1 A Brief History of FOMO (p. 1)
• Chapter 2 Your FOMO's Not Your Fault (p. 11)
• Chapter 3 More Than a Meme (p. 29)
• Chapter 4 The Other FO You Need to Know (p. 39)
• Chapter 5 The Sad Tate of the Man Who Got Everything He Wanted (p. 47)
• Section II The Hidden Cost of Fear (p. 67)
• Chapter 6 The Billion-Dollar Business of FOMO (p. 69)
• Chapter 7 FOBO, the Anti-Strategy (p. 85)
• Section III Decisive: Choosing What You Actually Want and Missing Out on the Rest (p. 101)
• Chapter 8 Freedom from Fear (p. 103)
• Chapter 9 Don't Sweat the Small Stuff (p. 111)
• Chapter 10 FOMO Is for the Planets, Not the Sun (p. 129)
• Chapter 11 Choosing Action over Option Value (p. 141)
• Chapter 12 Missing Out on the Rest (p. 155)
• Section IV Making FOMO and FOBO Work for You (p. 175)
• Chapter 13 Going All In Some of the Time (p. 177)
• Chapter 14 Game of FOs: Dealing with FOMO and FOBO in Other People (p. 195)
• Epilogue: We're Lucky to Have Options in the First Place (p. 205)
• Author's Note (p. 211)
• Acknowledgments (p. 213)
• Notes (p. 217)
• Index (p. 227)
• About the Author (p. 235)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

McGinnis's latest (The 10% Entrepreneur) guides readers in finding the power to choose what they desire out of life and the courage to miss out on the rest. He points out that FOMO (fear of missing out) is a highly addictive and destructive way to live, and that FOBO, fear of a better option, is equally harmful and paralyzing. The author outlines a decision-making model that helps them home in on what really matters by tuning out distractions and leveraging technology, thereby living comfortably with the decisions they've made. VERDICT This book's superb advice will appeal primarily to millennials and members of Gen Z.

Publishers Weekly Review

Venture capitalist McGinnis (The 10% Entrepreneur) breaks down the evolutionary responses known as the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) and Fear of Better Options (FOBO) in this lucid analysis. FOMO ("Social pressure resulting from the realization that you will miss out on or be excluded from a positive or memorable collective experience") and FOBO ("An anxiety-driven urge to hold out for something better based on the perception that a more favorable alternative or choice might exist") are terms McGinnis coined in articles he wrote while studying at Harvard Business School. These two fears, he argues, have plagued mankind since the beginning of time and have been exacerbated by social media. To overcome both FOMO and FOBO, he writes, one must center personal values and responsibilities and weigh them against outcomes: "When you find the power to choose what you actually want and the courage to miss out on the rest, you are finally liberated from indecision and the compulsion to have it all." To this end, he provides steps for making decisions on social plans, strategies for saying "no" in different situations, and rules for overcoming fear. This is a useful one-stop shop for those looking to take a decisive stand against the fear of what could have been. (May)

Booklist Review

McGinnis isn't just another American who experiences regular FOMO (the fear of missing out), he actually coined the term. Back in the early 2000s, while Mark Zuckerberg was creating Facebook less than a mile from McGinnis' apartment, McGinnis was attending Harvard Business School and noticed that everyone around him was in competition to have the highest quantity and quality of experiences, thus, FOMO. Nearly two decades later, the term has been added to Webster's dictionary and has become a ubiquitous part of the global vernacular. McGinnis hosts the podcast FOMO Sapiens, and with this book, publishes a bible on the definition of FOMO, its meteoric rise, how to spot it, its dangers, and its constructive uses. McGinnis warns of the other, more insidious, "FO" often associated with FOMO: FOBO, or the fear of a better option. While FOMO can be galvanizing and drive progress, FOBO paralyzes sufferers in an unending cycle of indecision. Fascinating, liberating, this could inspire FOMO in all who choose to leave it on the shelf.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Patrick J. McGinnis has been studying FOMO since he created the term nearly two decades ago, and he has developed a fresh approach to decision-making to beat it. Learning to weigh the costs and benefits of your choices, prioritizing your decisions, and listening to your gut are central to silencing FOMO and its lesser-known cousin, FOBO: Fear of a Better Option. After all, don't you want to feel comfortable and confident in your decisions?