Role Model: Basecamp
by Miki Saxon
I, and dozens of others, have written on the negative and downright destructive effects from social media’s FOMO.
However, I hadn’t given any thought to the idea that it had invaded the workplace, too.
As if email [at work] wasn’t bad enough at cultivating FOMO, we now have a new generation of real-time tools like chat to stoke it. Yet another thing that asks for your continuous partial attention all day on the premise that you can’t miss out.
FOMO is just as detrimental at work as it is personally. It distracts, interrupts conversations, and destroys focus.
Basecamp noticed and not only created a solution, but also gave it a catchy, sharable name.
People should be missing out! Most people should miss out on most things most of the time. That’s what we try to encourage at my company, Basecamp. JOMO! The joy of missing out.
It’s JOMO that lets you turn off the firehose of information and chatter and interruptions to actually get the right shit done. It’s JOMO that lets you catch up on what happened today as a single summary email tomorrow morning rather than with a drip-drip-drip feed throughout the day.
Once again, Basecamp hits a homerun. (Two previous posts, here and here, talk about others.)
If you’re impressed with Basecamp’s ideas, you’ll not only enjoy It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work, by Basecamp co-founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, you’ll also find solutions you can use.
Image credit: Basecamp
