I’m home sick with the flu with my son, who is also sick with the flu. While he’s napping I was catching up on my RSS feed. The blog post “FOMO Machines” by Barry Hess brought up an interesting phrase called “anti-dopamine hit”.

↑ Excerpt ↑

He says:

I’m a list-maker, and anything that causes me to want to note down an article or book or album or concert or play or video game or movie or…it’s most likely gonna end up giving me an anti-dopamine hit. (What’s the opposite-of-dopamine chemical/analogy? I dunno, but someone can probably tell me.) The fear of missing out for me isn’t just seeing the rest of humanity enjoying themselves, but it’s also being reminded of all of the things I wish I could do in my limited time.

It’s like he stared into my soul with that last sentence. I am someone who also makes lists or thinks of a bunch of projects that I’d love to do with my free time and also experiences FOMO/frustration about not being able to do all the things I could possibly want to do. This is likely at least partially due to my ADHD. It’s also probably just how I’m wired as a person. In his post, Hess calls out 6 main “FOMO machines” in his life: YouTube, Songkick (announces upcoming local concerts), Going (formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights), Reddit, Tabs, RSS feeds.

Right on cue, as I clicked “Create Post” on this blog post a notification slid on to my screen from Thrifty Traveler 1 letting me know there’s a great points deal on lie-flat seats to Hawaii right now.

Much like Hess says, I’m also not really at a great time in life to be able to book some last minute or extravagant flight deals. I want to travel with our now 8 month old but probably something a bit easier and more planned than this. Also for every deal I might consider, I’m getting 10 deals that just aren’t for me. Part of this is because I’ve also set multiple home airports and am also getting local and international deals. I’m going to trim down the number of emails I’m getting from them.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with aspirations, making lists of things you want to do/watch/read in the future, or thinking of fun projects you could work on. The key for me is that I need to think of these lists or ideas as merely options of things I could spend my free time on. I try to treat them as reminders of ideas I once had so that when I find myself looking for a fun thing to do or work on I have a place to reference things my brain once came up with. I should be very clear here, this is what I want to think of for these lists. It doesn’t always happen, sometimes I look at lists of ideas for blog posts, books to read, etc and I feel bad that there’s so much not done. However, I have been getting better lately at changing my mindset and instead seeing them as possible exciting things for the future.

Some of my own “FOMO machines” I’m going to re-evaluate:

• Thrifty Traveler emails, as stated above

• RSS feed subscriptions

  • I’ve done a decent job of keeping my subscription count low, but there’s some trimming I could do here

• Email newsletters

  • Most of the ones I care about go to RSS but I’ve been getting the Daily Edit from Minneapolis St Paul Magazine to my email and I never find time to read them. Or I read them and see so many things I’d like to go see and explore but feel bad I haven’t found the time to do so. Unsubscribing from this one for now.

1. Despite using this as an example of anti-dopamine for me, Thrifty Traveler is an excellent service and is a local small business based in the Twin Cities - highly recommend. ↵