Recently on Instagram I saw a new to me acronym: JOMO, the Joy of Missing Out. I wrote about FOMO—the Fear of Missing Out–in a 2016 column. FOMO relates to organization by keeping us distracted and unproductive or creating feelings of lack that can lead to impulse buying which of course lead to clutter. The idea of JOMO immediately resonated and felt so right for 2025. It is an attitude that can relieve a lot of anxiety by not creating a lot of meaningless tasks and clutter in the first place.
Cancel and re-negociate appointments: The best policy is to give a lot of consideration to your schedule before committing, but if you did make commitments that now seem exhausting or odious, you can usually cancel or reschedule. You don’t want to make too much of a habit of this—if you find yourself scheduling things with the idea that you can just cancel the day of if you’re not “feeling it” then it’s more of a bad manners situation and you might find people stop depending on you to suit up and show up.
Take extra time with relationships: When you get comfortable with JOMO, you’ll find that so much growth happens in relationships when you are just hanging out, television off, no agenda other than to sit in each others’ company. I love the feeling of giving my favorite relationships a lot of space and time for random sharing and positive vibe development. Time is the most valuable gift you can give someone, yourself and your pets included.
Make a list of people to call and catch up with: Have a list ready of friends and family you want to spend a little time with on the phone or over coffee. Set a limit by starting the phone call with, “I only have fifteen minutes but I’ve been wanting to catch up with you.” Or if it’s a coffee date, make it clear when you set it up how much time you’ve got. Nothing ruins a good catch up like resentments about unclear boundaries on time.
Resolve to reflect: So many people I respect swear by “morning pages,” the three-page a day journaling practice described by Julia Cameron in her classic book The Artist’s Way. Sometimes it takes more than a paragraph of journaling before we get to the core of what might have bothered us that day or a dream we had or an area we need to develop competency in. Lots of “to do’s” often come up when journaling and you can capture these in a formal to do list, but in the spirit of JOMO, just let the words flow and then recycle, burn or stick in a file for review much, much later when you have the benefit of hindsight.
Turn down the noise: Since the election I have not watched or listened to the news and I feel like a dark cloud has been lifted from my existence. It’s one thing to be informed, and another to be addicted to talking heads who repeat statistics and scenarios over and over in slightly various ways leading to a bunch of conclusions that turn out to be wrong or false. It’s exhausting and so unnecessary, since it is all opinion and conjecture. The point of all that talk is not to keep you informed but to sell Ozempic. The drugs they are selling have a host of hideous side effects and so does 24-hour news.
Listen: Everybody gets a lot of joy from being listened to—the joy of sharing. JOMO might mean that you become the listener much more often. There is something so relaxing about not needing to comment on everything or share a similar story or what have you. Active listening is so attractive and so rare! When we let other people shine and sparkle the whole world feels brighter.
Something old, something new: Instead of planning a new craft or activity, tie up loose ends from an old one. If you haven’t finished an art project, photo album, remodeling project or other task, think about how you could get completion in that area before moving on to something else. This might mean deciding to scrap or quit the older project, which can be totally fine! It sometimes feels just as good to decide to cut your losses as to finish something you aren’t excited by anymore. Just be sure to dispose of all the evidence of the old project—make a clean break–and start anything new with a blank slate.