Should you choose this one, which boasts a higher fiber count? Or that one, which is better value by weight? The one over there, which says it contains no artificial dyes? Or the wildcard – the brand you’ve never had before, but your friend swears is the best-tasting of all?

What you’re feeling is FOBO – the even worse cousin of FOMO. It’s a problem intricately entwined with the modern age, causing paralysis over what should be even the most trivial of decisions. It can wreak havoc with your health and relationships, and turn you into a virtual hermit, obsessed with finding a perfection that will never come along.

And here’s the worst part: in the end, you probably won’t even buy any cereal at all.

What is FOBO?

It’s not as well-known as FOMO, but FOBO was actually coined at the same time – by the same person, in the very same article, in fact. It therefore makes sense that the two terms are so related, being as they are kind of mirror images of each other: where FOMO makes you commit to everything, lest you miss out on some experience that everyone else got to see, FOBO does the opposite – paralyzing you from committing to anything at all.

“FOBO, or Fear Of A Better Option, is the anxiety that something better will come along,” author and venture capitalist Patrick McGinnis, who invented the two terms back in 2004, told HuffPost. “[It] makes it undesirable to commit to existing choices when making a decision.”

FOBO, then, is the nagging insecurity that makes you carry on swiping left past potential dates that you’d probably click pretty well with; it’s the hesitation you feel about sending off that job application when you might find a more suitable vacancy tomorrow. It’s what keeps you scrolling through virtually endless options of virtually identical shirts online, ultimately giving up in the face of Plain White Short Sleeve number 5138008 and accepting that you’ll never be able to figure out the right option.

The term “specifically refers to decisions where there are perfectly acceptable options in front of us, yet we struggle to choose just one,” McGinnis explained. “As a result, you live in a world of maybes, stringing yourself and others along.” 

“Rather than assessing your options, choosing one, and moving on with your day, you delay the inevitable,” he told HuffPost. “It’s not unlike hitting the snooze button on your alarm clock only to pull the covers over your head and fall back asleep … over and over and over.”

What’s behind FOBO?

We’ve probably all experienced this paralysis once or twice in our lives – but for some, it can be a real problem. “FOBO […] came out of my experience as a student at Harvard Business School,” McGinnis told the New York Times back in 2018. “I noticed that my classmates and I were always optimizing. We hedged, lived in a world of maybes and were paralyzed at the prospect of actually committing to something, out of fear that we might be choosing something that wasn’t the absolutely perfect option.”

Essentially, their fear of missing perfection was stopping them from doing anything at all. “When you have FOBO […] your paralysis turns into a Fear of Doing Anything,” McGinnis explained. “You are a deer in the headlights.”

But what makes this fear so overwhelming? Why do we get caught up in our heads like this? For McGinnis, the answer is pretty obvious: it’s just another unavoidable consequence of being a jumped-up ape in a sci-fi future.

“These feelings are biologically part of who we are,” he told The Guardian in 2019. “I call it the biology of wanting the best. Our ancestors a million years ago were programmed to wait for the best because it meant they were more likely to succeed.”

Today, though, success – at least, as far as evolution defines it, which is less “getting that promotion” or “amassing a billion dollars” and more “popping out a kid or two before getting eaten by a cave-bear at age 19” – is hardly out of reach. Today, we can “go on Amazon to buy a pair of white shoelaces,” McGinnis said, “and you have in excess of 200 choices.”

“Fifty years ago you would go to Woolworths and choose between three,” he added. “So that’s the context.”

In that respect, FOBO can be considered a sort of psychological “affliction of affluence”, McGinnis told The New York Times. “In order to have FOBO you must, by definition, have options,” he pointed out. “It is a byproduct of a hyper-busy, hyper-connected world in which everything seems possible, and, as a result, you are spoiled for choice.” 

Other experts, however, don’t think things are that simple. “It is possible for anxiety to be experienced around many different issues,” Nicky Lidbetter, chief executive of the charity Anxiety UK, told The Guardian, “of which a fear of choosing the wrong option in regards to big life decisions may be one.”

“Fear of a better option, however, is more likely to be linked to or a trigger for a pre-existing anxiety condition,” she said, “as opposed to being sufficient to warrant being categorized as an anxiety disorder in its own right.”

Alternatively, the source for FOBO might be a trauma – something regretful in their past “that they attribute to a wrong decision,” Racine Henry, a licensed marriage and family therapist, told HuffPost. It could even be something you learned from your family, she said.

And just as it can be caused by anxiety, so too can bad mental and physical health be caused by FOBO.  The fear “can lead to an anxiety or personality disorder developing,” Henry said; “the symptoms could result in loss of appetite and sleep, which could lead to physical illnesses.”

“Additionally, there could be loss of opportunity or relationship if the decision to be made is about taking a job or accepting a marriage proposal, for example.”

How to avoid FOBO

FOBO, then, is not something we want to embrace – quite the opposite, in fact. But how do we avoid something that seems to be at least a little hardwired into our biology? Is it even possible?

Well, good news: not only is it possible to swerve this cognitive trap, but it’s really not even that difficult. “To combat FOBO, it’s essential to shift your mindset about choices,” Florida psychologist Patricia Dixon told HuffPost. “Embrace the idea that your decisions may be the best for the moment, even if alternatives arise later.”

In other words: don’t shoot for perfect – shoot for “alright for now”. Do you need to find the perfect apartment right now? Or is living somewhere affordable and comfortable good enough? After all, it’s not like you’ll never be able to move if something better comes along.

“You might be surprised how often you can course-correct,” life coach and entrepreneur Tomas Svitorka told HuffPost. “If the pizza topping wasn’t as magical as you hoped, well, there’s always next time. Even with bigger things like jobs, if the job offer turns out to be less dreamy than promised, well, you can look for another job. It wasn’t going to be your last job anyway.”

Part of the big problem of FOBO, experts stress, is that it stops you from appreciating what you already have – so maybe take a little time to bask. As McGinnis repeatedly pointed out, FOBO affects those around you as much as it does you. It turns you into an unreliable friend, or the date who won’t commit to anything deeper – and eventually, people are going to take the hints you’re sending out.

“When you treat your life like a Tinder feed, swiping with reckless abandon without ever committing to any of the potential options, you send a clear and unambiguous message to everyone else: You are the ultimate holdout,” he told HuffPost. 

“You won’t set a clear course or commit to a plan of action,” he said. “Instead, you will let the possibilities pile up and only make a decision when it suits you, likely at the last minute, if at all.”

[H/T: HuffPost]