The daft voice that makes you overcommit
Click here to get your free AI Hacks For Academics Guide
〰️
Click here to get your free AI Hacks For Academics Guide 〰️
Last week, we talked about how saying no in academia often just bounces right back at us. But before we even get there, many of us struggle with saying yes in the first place—for one simple reason: FOMO.
We all know the tug of FOMO—the fear of missing out. It seeps into academic life in a thousand little ways: saying yes to a committee you only half care about, agreeing to another collaboration that sounds alright, writing a book chapter when you’re already behind on your own projects. It’s that voice in your head: What if this is the opportunity? What if saying no means I’ll regret it?
The irony is that every time FOMO wins, you chip away at the very things you say you want: focus, time, energy for research, space to breathe.
What shifts everything is seeing FOMO for what it is: an anxious survival instinct, not a strategy. It’s just your brain trying to keep you safe by piling on commitments. The antidote is to stop making decisions from fear and start making them from clarity about what actually matters to you. This is all about your nervous system response.
Here’s how I suggest you try it:
Pause before you answer. Notice the FOMO voice (“What if this is it?”) and name it. Who is that voice? Can you make it a daft character?
Check against your real priorities. Does this opportunity align with your research pipeline, and your medium to long-term career goals? Or your actual life?
Choose deliberately. Remember: every “yes” dilutes your energy. Every “no” protects it. And if it’s not a “hell yes”, it’s a no.
Sometimes that will mean saying no to fun or even prestigious things. That’s the discipline.
When you start saying no from clarity instead of yes from fear, you’ll feel less scattered and more intentional. You’ll protect the work that lights you up. And instead of drowning in commitments, you’ll have the bandwidth to notice the right opportunities when they come along, without the background hum of panic that you’re missing out.
