Imagine that you are going to watch a new series. We opened our favorite video service — and came to our senses only after two hours, having gone through hundreds of trailers, but still not finding the perfect series that you will definitely really like.
Or, let's say you wanted to order food for dinner, but got lost in the wilds of the delivery service, unable to decide what to take: sushi, Chinese noodles, pies, pizza or sandwiches .
And if you need to choose something more serious: a TV or a winter jacket - you risk getting stuck on marketplaces for the next couple of weeks and endlessly studying videos with reviews.
If this has happened to you, perhaps the fear of the best option is to blame, or FOBO How to make tough decisions easier / New York Times (from English Fear of Best Option).
This term was coined by How to beat F.O.B.O., from the expert who coined it / New York Times venture capitalist and writer Patrick McGinnis. He believes that the fear of the best option is an obsessive desire to make not just the optimal, but the most-presam ideal choice of all possible. A person suffering from FOBO understands that there are more or less suitable solutions, but is afraid to stop at them: suddenly they will still not be good enough and he will be disappointed.
Sometimes people exposed to FOBO are also called Satisficing vs. maximizing / Psychology Today maximizers. Unlike their opposite — moderates who weigh different options, find the right one and continue to live quietly — maximizers are never satisfied with their choice and are terribly afraid of making a mistake.
Patrick McGinnis "invented" not only FOBO, but also his "colleague" FOMO — Fear of Missing Out, fear of lost profits. These two conditions are often compared because they are both quite unpleasant. But FOBO doesn't just make us worry forever that we're missing something important and grabbing at everything, it literally paralyzes us.
The fear of the best option can be called a hybrid of very heavy perfectionism and decision-making fatigue. Under his influence, a person spends much more time choosing, even if it's about something very simple. And when it comes to fateful decisions like choosing a profession or place of residence, it risks finally "hanging up" and not being able to stop at a single option in the end.
That's exactly what does How to beat F.O.B.O., from the expert who coined it / New York Times Patrick McGinnis himself. If he has to make a not particularly important decision, and he is completely confused, then he trusts the choice to chance.
This method is recommended for making more serious decisions. Collect and structure all the data you have, for example, make a table. When the information laid out on the shelves will be in front of your eyes, you will not be so anxious and you will know for sure that all the nuances were taken into account when choosing.
There are almost no such situations that cannot be replayed in any way. Even if you make a decision that will change your life, you can fix its consequences. For example, an apartment, if you don't like it anymore, you can sell and then buy a new one. In the same way, you can change not only your place of residence, but also your job and profession.
Psychologists advise not to forget that one decision is always followed by another in any case. Whatever happens, you will continue to act based on new circumstances. And spending so much energy and mental strength on each choice simply does not have Do you have Fobo? Why “fear of better options” is making us miserable – and how to get around it / Stylist meaning.
In most cases, you are not able to take into account and control everything. You can choose the perfect TV for a month, and then find out that a new model has come out, even better. In an ideal salon, your hair can be ruined. And an ideal series that you liked based on the annotation and reviews may turn out to be too boring.
