JOMO: The Joy of Missing Out

Happy Thursday,

Leadership is hard enough without carrying a digital scoreboard in your pocket. Yes, I am looking at you LinkedIn. Scroll social media for five minutes and you will see it. Someone got promoted. Someone started a business. Someone retired early. Someone is making six figures working two days a week. Someone finished a 4am ice bath before closing a global deal. Before you know it, the real progress you are making in your own career starts to feel a bit flat. The problem is not ambition. The problem is comparison. This is showing up more often than you might think in confidential conversations we have with leaders. Highly capable people quietly questioning their pace, their progress, and their direction. Maybe it is time to unplug.

🧠 LEARN something.

Leaders have always compared themselves to others in career and success. The more driven and ambitious you are, the more naturally it happens. Psychologists call this Social Comparison Theory, a concept studied since the 1950s. As humans, we evaluate ourselves by looking sideways at our peers to understand where we stand. Social media has poured rocket fuel on that instinct, especially when it comes to leadership and career success. The mechanism is simple. You are comparing your messy middle with someone else’s curated peak moment. The highlight reel in your feed sits beside the raw, imperfect reality of your day to day life. For leaders, this creates a subtle distortion. You begin judging your strategy, career or progress against someone else’s timeline. Someone posts about scaling to 200 staff. Someone announces a board role. Someone talks about their “next chapter.” Quietly, a voice appears asking whether you are moving fast enough.

I joined social media in 2019 after years without it due to military security clearance requirements, and I had to learn this lesson quickly. As someone who now produces daily social media content, people would be surprised how selective I am about who I follow and what I consume. That is where JOMO comes in for me. Unlike FOMO, the fear of missing out that drives much of social media engagement, JOMO is the joy of missing out. It is not about being less ambitious or less connected. It is about deliberately stepping outside the comparison game and refusing to measure your progress against a stream of curated milestones. Most experienced leaders already know that strategy takes time, culture takes years, and meaningful progress often looks boring from the inside. Yet comparison still creeps in because our brains are wired to notice status signals, and social platforms amplify them. To build something great, whether a business, a career or a life, the real discipline is knowing what is worth comparing and what is simply noise.

🤔 REFLECT on an idea.

I only partly agree with this. There is an element of the quote that is timeless and true. But in modern work, life and careers; social comparison and exposure to other people’s success stories is inevitable. You cannot live under a rock. The real skill is being deliberate about how you compare and who you compare yourself with. In my experience, the real thief of joy is unrealistic comparison.

😊 SMILE a little.

Social media is the only place where someone can run a marathon, raise $20 million in funding, finish a 60 minute meditation, record a podcast, read three leadership books and cook a perfect protein breakfast, and get their kids off to school, all before 9am! 😂

✅ DO IT to get results.

If my experience is anything to go by, JOMO is a deliberate practice, not a one time realisation. In modern life you will always be exposed to other people’s success, so the real discipline is managing how you respond to it. There are many ways to do this, from strengthening your ability to stay present to setting clearer attention boundaries and gratitude style reflections. But here is one approach that works for me. Bear in mind, I am naturally quite self critical, prone to comparing myself with others, and rarely satisfied with what I have achieved haha!

If you are anything like me, then try this: write down three things that matter most to you in your career and life. It could be health, family, deep work, creativity, building a business, or retiring earlier. No more than three. Then the next time you catch yourself comparing your progress to someone else’s, real or imagined, ask a simple question: “Does this align with what actually matters to me?” If the answer is yes, the comparison may be useful. If the answer is no, keep scrolling, let it go and move on.

🌱 How we can support you and your team.

We provide strategic leadership solutions tailored to align with your business strategy, size, and budget. We can support your with:

• 1:1 Leadership and Performance Coaching

• Team Coaching, for high performing teams

• 1:1 Health & Lifestyle Coaching for busy stressed leaders.

• Workshops, offsites and team development.

• Or our flagship individual Leadership Coaching Programs.

Kia pai tō wiki

Kenny Bhosale

CEO & Founder, The Bridge Leaders