A group of friends planned a Thursday afternoon happy hour get-together and I couldn’t make it.
I was so happy.
Don’t get me wrong—I love these people and they’re a hoot to hang out with. But there are times when you just don’t want to leave your house, right?
I heard an interview with Dietrich Mateschitz, the founder of Red Bull, and he had an interesting take on this. He described going out as “the most useless use of time.”
Then he added a postscript that made me laugh. He said: “When I go out from time to time, it’s just to convince myself that I’m not missing out on a lot.”
FOMO, meet DOMO
Okay, so people are not wired the same way. I have acquaintances who schedule themselves to the max, with hardly a dot-free date on their monthly calendar. And they wouldn’t have it any other way. We’ve even created an acronym for this condition: FOMO, or the Fear of Missing Out.
Others, like me—and maybe you—enjoy seeing friends occasionally, but we’re perfectly content staying home. In fact, we often prefer it.
I suppose our acronym should be DOMO, or the Delight of Missing Out.
Another friend of mine puts it another way. She says “Future Me will be pissed that Current Me is making plans for down the road.”
Yeah. I have to admit Future Me and I have a long, troubled history.
Your mouth says YES, your soul says NOPE
There was an interesting piece about the psychology behind all this. The author pointed out that we feel pressure in the moment to commit to future plans, even though we’re pretty sure we won’t want to do it when the time comes. The social pressure is too much, and we go against our better nature.
It’s why every event has a certain percentage of last-minute cancellations. Most of those people knew at the time of booking that they’d bail out, but they figured it would be easier to cancel later than to look like a schmuck when originally asked. Many say it’s hard to say no at the time, but easy to come up with a last-minute excuse when the time comes.
There’s also a lot written on the power of NO. Experts are trying to get more of us to adopt the mindset of turning down requests on our time, and in our hearts we know they’re right. The best tip I’ve ever heard on this was to not give a reason when you say no to something. It’s too easy for the host to bargain with you.
For instance, if you say you can’t make it because you have a commitment at 6 o’clock, they might come back and say, “What if we made it at four instead?”
Don’t offer a reason. Just say thank you, but no, I won’t be able to make it. And change the subject.
I understand there’s a certain percentage of people who can’t understand this at all, because they’d never dream of turning down a chance to socialize.
For the rest of us? We’ll keep savoring the quiet pleasure of not showing up.
Dom Testa writes fiction and nonfiction, and believes most plans look much better from a distance.
Find most of his published stuff at DomTestaBooks.com.