The FOMO Math Nobody Taught Us
A few weeks ago I was lying on my daughter's bedroom floor, patting her back, doing the whole rub-scratch-repeat thing we do to get her to sleep, and I thought to myself: this was the right call.
Earlier that night I'd had major FOMO. My friend Emily was hosting a dinner party at her place in Squamish, with a whole community of women I love being around, and I wasn't there.
I posted about it on Instagram — just a quick, honest thing I threw up in my stories because I was feeling it in real time. And then I went and did bedtime, and somewhere in the middle of scratching my kid's back, the FOMO and the certainty just... sat there together. Both true at once.
I didn't expect that to be the thing so many of you would want to talk about. But you did. A bunch of you messaged me asking what phase of parenthood you're in, what you wanted more of on the podcast — and an overwhelming number of you said some version of: can we talk about FOMO? So here we are.
FOMO isn't really about money. It's about time.
We treat FOMO like it's mostly a financial calculation — can I afford this trip, this class, this night out. But when I actually sit with it, the real math is always time.
You cannot be in two places at once.
Time is linear. That's it. That's the whole constraint. I wanted to be at Emily's and I wanted to be on my daughter's floor, and there was no version of the night where I got both.
Before kids, FOMO was simple. You said yes to the birthday dinner, your friends got tickets to a concert you didn't know about, you felt a pang, you went to the dinner anyway, and — lesson learned. Annoying, sure. But you moved on by the next morning.
After kids, it gets complicated in a way I don't think anyone warns you about. You've got this heartbeat outside your own heart now. And on one day you want to say no to absolutely everything that isn't your family, and on another day — sometimes the same day, an hour later — you're desperate for two hours that belong only to you. Both feelings are legitimate. Neither one is wrong. You just flip-flop, constantly, and that's apparently just what having a kid does to the wiring.
The question that changed how I decide anything
Years ago, in grad school for coaching, I watched a live coaching session where the coach asked her client one question that I have never forgotten: if you say yes to this, what are you saying no to?
I still smile every time I say that sentence out loud, because it's so simple and so completely reframes everything. It's not "should I go to this optional work dinner where the CEO's flying in." It's: if I say yes to that, am I saying no to a random weeknight bedtime? A baseball game? My kid's first ballet recital? Suddenly the decision isn't about the dinner at all — it's about what it costs.
What actually helps
A few things I've learned to lean on, for the recurring FOMO — the stuff that shows up every month, not just once:
Build a rhythm, not a routine. A routine is a house of cards — pull one piece out and the whole thing collapses. A rhythm is looser. My husband and I work out Monday, Wednesday, Friday mornings, staggered around each other's schedules, and neither of us negotiates it anymore — it just happens. I host a professional event called the Breakfast Club on the last Thursday of every month, and my daughter's used to it now. I get a little dressed up, she picks the outfit with me, I show her photos after. There's no apologizing built into it anymore. It's just what we do.
Do the cost-benefit math, honestly. Not a spreadsheet — just: what's this actually costing me (time, money, energy), and what am I actually getting back? If you can't answer the second half, that's information.
Check your ego against your soul. Is this a hell yeah because it lights you up, or because the "right" people will be there and you don't want to be left out of something? Both are human. Only one of them should be steering the decision.
Don't allow yourself regret. Allow yourself information. A few weeks ago I said yes to something that wasn't a hell yeah before I went, and it still wasn't a hell yeah once I got there. I don't regret it — I learned from it. I didn't research who'd be there or what the vibe would be, and I underestimated how much of my workday it would eat. Next time, that's exactly what I'll check first.
The three questions
When I'm actually standing at the fork — go or don't go, say yes or say no — these are the three questions I ask myself, and the same three I walk clients through:
What are the factors surrounding this? Where are you at, capacity-wise, right now?
What am I focusing on right now? Not in general — this season, specifically.
What are my options? Because it's almost never binary. Could this happen next month instead? Is there a version of this that gets you 80% of what you wanted without the full cost?
That third one is the one people skip. We jump straight to yes-or-no and forget there's usually a door in between.
The episode that inspired this post
We're talking about FOMO: what it actually is, why it gets so much heavier and more layered once you become a parent, and the three questions I ask myself — and my clients — before deciding if something's a hell yeah or a "not right now."
