Opportunity Fear Of Missing Out
Opportunity Fear Of Missing Out (Opportunity FOMO ) is something I came up with the last time an idea was stuck in my head and made me unable to focus on my projects1 for a few days.
More commonly, this is known as entrepreneurial obsession, the obsession to jump on the bandwagon with a new idea that came to your mind. In 2023, someone asked on HN how to deal with entrepreneurial obsession? . Especially the user asked how to deal with thinking about the idea that takes you away from what you’re doing and won’t let you think of anything else. You even think that this new idea IS your next big thing, and you should drop everything you’re working on right now and fully commit to this new idea.
As fast as the idea comes to your mind, the initial excitement vanishes and your motivation drops. Now you’re back to normal and might be thinking that this idea is not the right one. But wait… you just had a thought about another idea. Maybe this is the one..? Now it’s starting all over again.
For me, opportunity FOMO is present almost every day. There are always exciting things around every corner I would love to work on. It’s just that I need to keep my focus at one thing at a time. Otherwise, I will jump around, never finish anything and get lost in dopamine highs from each of the new ideas.
On HN a lot of people think that ideas are worth nothing. They say it’s all about the execution, efficiency, commitment and people. And at least a bit of luck. I personally have similar thoughts. The idea itself is only a broad direction, something to measure your progress with (How far away am I from my initial idea? Do I need to pivot?) and to tell others about. The idea is nothing that in itself is valuable. An idea is nothing than an initial thought. You need to validate the idea, do market research, talk to potential customers. And only then an idea might become more than just an idea.
How I try to handle my Opportunity FOMO
Nowadays, when a new idea comes to my mind, I write it on a (digital) note. I add it to my do-later-when-I-have-infinite-time list - a useful hack to prevent yourself from losing your focus similar to the YouTube watch later playlist2. I try to prioritize the idea as objective as possible (factoring out my excitement with starting it right away) and provide it with a priority. Now it’s part of my idea list and doesn’t need to live rent-free in my head. My list is automatically ordered by priority and creation date3 which helps to only concentrate what’s really important.
After a while I re-prioritze my ideas. This is just like any other product owner would do with user stories. Re-evaluating always shows that my focus shifted somewhere else. Suddenly, an idea I always thought I’ll work on next is now only in 5th place.
This workflow keeps me away from the desire to work on something new. I know that I’ve got my idea list and working on the thing that I work on right now is the right thing to do. Of course, sometimes it’s best to just bury the current project, but this is definitely not the case when a new idea comes to your mind.
Having thoughts on new ideas is normal and is also a way to be creative. Sometimes when a new idea pops up I take an hour or two to do some research on the idea. This dedicated time span often stabilizes my feelings on this new idea. It might be more complex than I thought, there are already a lot of competitors, or I just don’t “feel the idea anymore”. But be careful to not get hooked up with the idea even more. Always keep it away from you to get back to normal as fast as possible.
If this does not help you, read taylor’s post called Your Brilliant App Idea .
When I write about projects it’s mostly about a side project, e.g. developing an app for personal use or a script solving a specific problem . It can also be about a business project, a project where you turned your side project into an income producing project. The term project might sound like something one would spend only a few hours on. However, it might also be the case that your project is a big full-time project. A startup is also “just” a project. ↩︎
Instead of watching a video on YouTube straight away, you can add it to your Watch Later playlist and tell yourself that you can watch it in the evening after finishing work. When evening comes, something else is more important, or you think for yourself that watching the video is not worth your time. ↩︎
I think ordering by creation date can either be ASC or DESC. One could argue that the newer the idea the less significant the priority or that older ideas are outdated and will drop out of the list sooner or later. ↩︎