MBA2498 Q&A Wednesday: I'm always experiencing FOMO. How can I be more disciplined?

0:09Heyo, welcome to the$100 MBA show, helping you get your business where you want it to be with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. And today's episode is Q &A Wednesday, where we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net. Today's question is from Ken and Ken asks, I'm always experiencing FOMO, fear of missing out. It's hard for me to say no to invites, opportunities, whether it's business or even social. I'm finding that this is affecting my productivity and my ability to get ahead in my business.

0:49How can I be more disciplined? Ken, the fear of missing out or FOMO is something many of us struggle with, especially in the age of social media and constant connectivity. People can reach out to you. They can contact you. They can get a hold of you in so many different ways, which means they can distract you in so many different ways. Don't worry. I've got your back. I got some practical strategies to help you become more disciplined and overcome FOMO. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. A word of warning, this episode is going to be a little bit in your face, okay? It's a little bit of tough love and only because I know what it feels like.

1:26I've been there before and you just need to be told the truth. This all comes from a place of caring and wanting to see you succeed Ken and anybody else who is going through this. First thing you need to do is you need to identify what your priorities are. And when I say priorities, I'm not talking about 20 different things. I'm talking about what are the top three priorities of your life? What are your main goals and objectives? You got to get real. Okay. You got to get face to face with the reality that you can't do everything. Okay. And this trying to do everything and be a part of everything and saying yes to everything, it hasn't worked for you.

2:01And And in fact, I haven't seen it work for anybody. Okay, so we got to get real with ourselves. Do you care about building your business? Do you care about your professional success? Do you want to become something better than you are today? If you do, you have to prove to yourself that it's a priority by the actions you take. Right now, I'm telling you, the truth is you are not making your business a priority. Now, if you're listening to this and you're getting a little riled up or you feel like I'm wrong, ask yourself this question. Why have you prioritized the other things that you've been invited to or have done instead of your business?

2:38Why have you actually not done what you're supposed to do in terms of taking care of what you want to do in your business, growing it, spending time, developing yourself so you're a better entrepreneur? Why have you not done it? And you're going to list me a bunch of other things. And you're going to say I'm too busy. You're going to say that I care about my friends and my family and that there's other obligations I have. There's the truth. Those things are more of a priority, at least for now, because you are prioritizing them in terms of your time. We all have 24 hours in the day. You are choosing to spend those 24 hours in a certain way.

3:10There's no right or wrong answer here. I'm not scolding anybody for choosing to spend their 24 hours differently. If you want to spend all your waking hours playing video games and watching Netflix and eating popcorn, that's you, man. Go for it. Enjoy. It's your life. It's your choice. That's how you want to spend your time. and I'm not here to tell you to do otherwise, but I'm here to tell you if you are really interested in starting a successful business, growing that business, being financially independent, then you have to change your priorities. It has to be a priority in your life. So the first step is you need to say, these are the top three things that are important to me and rank them.

3:49Number one is more important than number two, and number two is more important than number three. So let's say your main goal is to grow your online business. Write it down. Keep it visible. Put it on a piece of paper. Put it on a post-it note. Stick it on your monitor. Put it on your computer. Make it the wallpaper on your phone. If that's number one, what's number two? Your health. What's number three? Your family. And here's the kicker, okay? The reason why I say only three is because you really can't be great at more than three things at a time. This is my experience in life. This is my experience in seeing other great people succeed in the world.

4:24So choose three. For me, my three, in no particular order, is my work, my business, my craft, my family. I'm talking about my immediate family and my health. That's it. Why is this important? Because you are going to have to make choices all the time between those three priorities and something else. So if somebody invites you to a party and you haven't done what you're supposed to do for your business, like create a piece of content, a blog post, a video, create your sales strategy, outline your webinar that you're going to do to be able to bring in new customers, whatever it might be. You're going to get an invite to a party.

4:59You're going to be asked to help somebody move. You're going to be asked to go out and go shopping with a friend you haven't seen in a long time. You're going to have to make a choice. Okay. And you might be saying, well, maybe I can do that and then come back and do the business. Well, in that moment, you have chosen in your priorities. You're saying one thing and doing something else. So I'm telling you, be real, choose your priorities. If your friends are more important than your business, then put that in your top three and just be honest with yourself. And if it isn't, then you need to act upon what you say.

5:31And it's very hard for you to act upon what your priorities are if you don't know what they are, if you don't have them right in front of you. Now, listen, if you have fulfilled all your obligations to your top three priorities and somebody reaches out and say, hey, let's go shoe shopping and you got free time, go ahead, enjoy yourself. You're not choosing between your priorities now and something else. Number two, you want to stay disciplined. You need to use a schedule, a calendar. Okay. I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs I met, how many professionals that are working in corporate jobs that don't use a schedule.

6:02They don't have a calendar. Okay. I've always said this, your time is your greatest asset. You can't make more time. The minute that just passed right now, as you're listening to this podcast is gone forever, okay? You are a minute older now. You have one minute left in your life. That's the reality. I don't want to be morbid here, but this is the truth. The truth is that every minute of your life is like a credit. It's like how much value you have left. Knowing how you're going to spend your time during each day is going to allow you to plug in those priorities that we talked about earlier. Plan out your day in advance and allocate specific time blocks for your most important tasks.

6:40I do this every single morning. I start my day with about 15 minutes of planning. It doesn't take long. It's only 15 minutes of planning. So what I like to do is I write down all the things I want to get done in my top priorities. So I have my three top priorities. How am I going to do things to contribute to my top priorities? So some things on my list might be the gym, recording a podcast, planning out my next lesson for the$100 MBA course, taking a family member to a doctor's appointment, whatever it might be. I write down all the things I want to get done today. And then I circle what are the things that are must, that if I don't do these things today, then it's not a win.

7:18It's not a good day. And what things can I do tomorrow or next week that are not time sensitive? It takes me 15 minutes to kind of brainstorm, write these ideas down in my notebook, in my journal. And this allows me to have a clear schedule of items that I need to get done. And then I pop them in my calendar and I know exactly when I have to do what. And in those time blocks, I know that I need to be in a distraction-free zone. That means no social media on my phone, no social media on my computer. If you don't know how to control yourself, there's a great web app called News Feed Eradicator. It blocks all your social news feeds.

7:53This makes things so much easier. My next tip is to focus on your own journey. Comparing yourself to others is a major source of FOMO. Remember that everyone's journey is different. Everybody's on a different journey. Focus on your own progress and make sure you celebrate your achievements, no matter how small. Entrepreneurs are actually really bad at this, at celebrating wins, but you need to make this a practice. This shift in perspective can help you feel more content and less concerned about what others are doing. What I do is in my journal, I keep track of my wins. I force myself to write down, what was a win from yesterday?

8:33What was my biggest win? And that could be something like, I went to the gym even though I didn't feel like it that day. So every day I'm writing the win from yesterday. And what's a good thing to do is every once in a while, every few days, maybe every week, you can go back and read all your previous wins. Reflecting on your journey, reflecting on those wins keeps you motivated and keeps you going for more wins. All right, here's my final tip before I wrap up, and it's a good one. Find an accountability partner. Having someone to hold you accountable can really boost your discipline. Not only do they hold you accountable, but you feel obligated to hold your word, to be respectful of that relationship.

9:11This could be a friend, it could be a colleague, this could be a mentor who checks in on you regularly to make sure that you're on track. For me, it's Nicole. Nicole's my business partner and partner in life, and we act as accountability partners for each other. She knows my goals, I know her goals. She knows what I'm trying to get done this week, I know the same for her. And we check on each other regularly and discuss her progress. This mutual support helps us to stay disciplined, allows us to stay away from FOMO and focus on our priorities. And when needed, she keeps me in check and tells me, hey, you said you wanted to get this done.

9:44Why haven't you really spent a lot of time this week on that? And I return the favor as well. So Ken, FOMO is not something that's incurable. You can overcome it. You just got to get real about what you want out of life and then set some systems around the ones I just shared with you today to help you implement, to help you stay on track, to help you stay disciplined like you mentioned. Thanks so much for asking your question, Ken. Super helpful for you to ask it in public because others are going to benefit from today's advice as well. If you're listening and you've got a question you want to ask, go ahead and email me over at omar at 100mba.net and I'll make sure to answer it right here on Q &A Wednesday.

10:19Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Remember, it's all about setting clear priorities, creating a structure and a schedule, setting boundaries, being mindful of what you're doing, and focusing on your own journey. And don't forget to reward yourself along the way and thank your accountability partner for holding you accountable. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

10:56We'll see you next time.