FOMU & Overthinking
The 3 Phases of the FOMU Loop
Wondering how to stop overthinking? Start by recognizing the FOMU cycle: fear of making mistakes, the mistake itself, and the recovery that follows.
I’ve helped leaders and organizations recognize FOMU (Fear of Messing Up) in the context of disability inclusion for years. What I haven't talked about as much is what it’s been like for me to remember and understand it in myself.
Here's what I know: FOMU isn't just the anxiety about mistakes, it’s actually a cycle that has three steps.
The fear: overthinking before anything happens
There's the fear. When hours are spent agonizing before anything has even happened. Rewriting the email for the 20th time. Replaying conversations assessing risk. A churning stomach hoping a message didn't land wrong.
The mistake: why perfection cannot control the outcome
But that’s just the first phase. Because then, there’s the mistake itself, which no amount of vigilance can avoid. Because here's the harsh truth: you can spend hours perfecting and still not control the outcome. Outcomes are never only dictated by your effort, precision or perfection. FOMU driven perfectionism is meant to avoid mistakes, but when it goes wrong anyway (because it will), the message becomes: I should have known better.
The aftermath: recovery, not self-punishment
That kicks off phase 3, aka the aftermath. The part nobody really talks about. The self-punishment. The replaying of mistakes and scenarios that you’re sure could’ve avoided it. The heart palpitations. The intensity of the reaction or length of recovery doesn't necessarily reflect the size of the error, it’s driven by the size of the fear. It's where FOMU does its deepest damage. You believe that if you just try hard enough next time, you won’t mess up again.
I conducted 16 research interviews with high-achieving professionals who resonated with this pattern. Some told me they were losing between 3 to 20 hours a week to the FOMU cycle, despite the fact that from the outside, they’re crushing it.
The cost of FOMU for businesses and inclusion is real, but what happens on an individual level is just as real, just as structural and just as worth addressing. Too many people have FOMU at the wheel, and are carrying it alone.
This work grew directly out of everything I've been building in my disability inclusion work. The lens is wider now, and I'm excited to see where it leads.