"I must hold it for the greatest calamity of our time, which lets nothing come to maturity, that one moment is consumed by the next, and the day spent in the day; so that a man is always living from hand to mouth, without having anything to show for it. Have we not already newspapers for every hour of the day! They publish abroad every thing that everyone does, or is busy with or meditating; nay, his very designs are thereby dragged into publicity. No one can rejoice or be sorry, but as a pastime for others; and so it goes on from house to house, from city to city, from kingdom to kingdom, and at last from one hemisphere to the other, all in post haste."
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, from his posthumous 1833 Maxims and Reflections, reflecting "that a culture of constant news eviscerates the past and the future, leaving you no time to metabolise lessons or sketch out a plan, always pulling you into the whirlpool of Something Important Happening Somewhere."
Sunday, 5 April 2026
FOMO leaves little time for reflection
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We're predisposed towards FOMO because in our evolutionary past our environment was relatively constant, and any news signalling a change was rare and often valuable to maximising our survival chances. Not so much now that we're flooded with news from all directions. The cost of trying to take it all in outweighs the benefits that come from reflection, even when the reflection seems aimless or purposeless.
It's a similar concept to the benefits of 'deliberate deoptimisation' - a realisation that trying to optimise everything spreads us too thin, and we should consciously make the less optimum (but cognitively easier) selection at times, allowing more time and energy for the things that matter the most. The more conscientious and ambitious you are, the more likely you are to benefit from this advice.
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