Stoa Digest #37: FOMO

To be or not to be.

Feb 28, 2022

I simply found this from all the constant Stoa chatter I'm inundated by.

The power of not only networking, making friends, but also finding cheerleaders at Stoa is perfectly consummated in this friendly mail one C4 fellow sent to a very, very solid friend he’s made in the cohort.

Here goes!

“Hello dear reader,

I have been a victim of FOMO long enough to teach this subject to others. It is both a boon and a bane, but most people, unfortunately, don't understand it completely.

FOMO or fear of missing out signifies the human disorder to feel sad, dejected, uneasy, weird when they see other homo sapiens doing something that they are not.

You are at your house scrolling through Kaccha Badam reels while you see your friends chillin' at Socials. The uneasy weirdness that you experience is called FOMO.

You are at your job, doing your work with utmost sincerity and your friend messages you that they earned a sh*t ton of money on Automotive Axle. The sudden urge to then invest in the same stock is called FOMO.

There is a very thin line between FOMO and jealousy however both are different. The feeling you get when you see 19-year-old kids making billion-dollar companies while you are negotiating for a 50k increase in your paycheck -- this is jealousy.

Now that we understand what FOMO is, let's understand how to make the best use of this. We can use FOMO to drive more work, push harder to do things that you would not do generally. When you let FOMO drive you, you unleash a raging bull charging in all directions making waves. Is it good? maybe maybe not. That is for you to decide.

Until Next Time

May the 4th be with you”

- From Aayush Mittal

📣 Announcements 📣

Last week the team published this small little bio on the magic that Mirnalini brings to our community.

Find it here, share it with people you think would appreciate her!

https://discover.stoaschool.com/c/before-after/mirnalini-venkatraman-never-settle

👯‍♀️ Event Announcements 👯‍♀️

Last Friday we had quite a musical night.
If you were there, you know that you reminisced & felt more than you intended on, but if you missed out though, you’re in luck cause as per regular programming, we have another night planned for you this Friday!

This one will be slightly different than the ones we’ve had so far, because Vaishak & Ryan wanted you to disappear into their soundscape.

We won’t give away too much though, and will leave that to them!

Catch us on the Stoa Radio on Friday night at 9pm!

Tomorrow we have Tanishka talking to us about storytelling & how to do it best. If you dont know yet, Tanishka is the best girl we know & a pro-petitioner of Cohort 2 - so this one will be special.

On Thursday we have a Community Networking Event - which is going to be very, very interesting & is going to be hosted by two veterans of the Stoa Community - come catch them this Thursday!!

🥳 🎂Birthday Parttaaayy! 🥳 🎂

1st Mar - Srishti Gupta

2nd Mar - Pradeep Krishnamurthy

3rd Mar - Eeshan Singh, SwethaSree Sridhar

4th Mar - Nikita Hariramani

🔦Fellow Spotlight 🔦

Why are you a lurker at Stoa?

“Honestly, I dont know. Like I think it’s really hard to pick what to engage with, especially at a place like Stoa, which is what makes me land up in an overthinking loop, and then that becomes so intense, that I just rest the idea of starting in the first place.
So I have no actual reason, just sometimes it takes too much thought, I guess.
It definitely has something to do with my ability to participate in Community Nights - like if you can do that, then you sort of have a pulse of things running within the community, but if you dont have that, then it just becomes so much harder to find your place.“

What’s something that gets you talking?

“Oh, board games, for sure!
We’re a small group for now toh, but there’s a small little niche of Stoa Boardgamers for sure, and that’s exciting.
Board gaming communities are damn fun, like they’re closed & pretty exclusive, but they’re intense amounts of fun. I was lucky enough to be introduced to the community just simply because I stayed with a friend who got interested in them, and so I got roped along, but it ended up being super fun!”

Where did you end up after college?

“Stereotypically, I did engineering in college, but I knew almost with complete certainty that I definitely did not want to do anything in Engineering once I’d finished.
So I got a job being a Data Analyst, moved up the ranks, and then also ended up finding out I enjoyed conversations more, and managed to navigate into the consultant side of things in the same space. ”

What’s something you think holds you back?

“Oh, networking, connecting, talking to people.
It’s always the thought of, ‘Why will someone give me their time?’ like, if I ask them one dumb question, then that’s it - like that’s a door closed forever.
So there is that internal dialogue happening.
Because if I know I want something from the person I'm talking to, then it becomes very, ‘damn, now I have to make it your while’ - so that’s the intimidating bit for sure.”

Did Stoa change anything for you?

“When I joined, I joined cause one of my buddies from Bangalore told me he was doing this ‘Stoa thing’, so then I thought, ‘why not’.

It’s changed a lot for me though, like I finally now have a reason to move out of home, cause of past experience.
I remember we had one of our Learning Weekends which was very Supply Chain focussed, and I had a lot of background in that space, cause I'd worked in the space for 3y, and then in the middle of all of this, Mira messages me out of the blue & goes, ‘Bro! you want to switch over & come to our company, kya?’
It was super serendipitous, because her company - Fountain9 - is also solving a problem that I really enjoyed working on when I had the chance to in the past. It’s just this place where you get to have the most learning & it also opens up opportunities for you, so I interviewed, and it took a while, but it ended up working out.”

What’s something Stoans are unlikely to know about you?

“I used to avidly be into theatre. With everything that happened in 11th & 12th and me having to pick like Science, and just Science being a pretty tough time to live through at that time, I had to just leave Theatre behind.
Given the choice though, I would probably pick the arts to study, because I just enjoyed those subjects.
Oh, and I love cooking - like it’s super fun.”

If you had to make a playbook of all your greatest learnings - what would they be?

Hmmmm, I mean, this is after all my years of experience, and just how I manage people now, I guess.
Always surround yourself with the smartest people.
It’s really hard to judge whose smart & whose dumb in the outside world, but work is also the easiest place to build relationships, because everyone you interact with is aligned to one single outcome - so it levels the field out a bit. For me, usually this ends up being people who are really good at something I'm not good at, at all. Because they’re aligned to the central goal though, what ends up happening is you learn & commit a lot better to your work, because of not only having context, but also knowing them. .
I’m always constructive.
There’s no point not being constructive, it just leaves negative energy not only in the person giving it, but also receiving it, so being constructive is the only route I'd rather take - it teaches you so much, and much faster as well. If someone actually wants to be candid & asks for the feedback, that’s when I’m ready to have that conversation with them, but mistakes happen everyday, like there’s no point me piling onto someone making a mistake - what is the point even.
There is always going to be a lot of work.
I mean, this is a pretty straightforward one - there’s no other way to put this, but the only way to navigate it, is to learn how to set expectations with people, and then from there you can figure the rest out.
Enabling that life balance is necessary especially now.
After all the stuff that’s happened in the pandemic, I think I started creating like this open line of communication with people that were working with me, and tried to be as vulnerable as possible. Because you work for only say so many hours in a day, but the rest of them are your life, so it makes sense to accept the people you work with as whole humans, and not just simply ‘employees’.
Be empathetic.
If you’re like me, then being open to being vulnerable to someone who you’re managing, because I'm very, very able to give feedback - but I dont want to constantly only be giving feedback, so I made it super clear to my teams that I've worked with so far - like if you want feedback, then you come to me, or even if you’re stressed or think there’s too much on your plate, like I’ll sit & help break it down and all of that, but I'm not the person who’ll just randomly start giving feedback - because if the person receiving it isn't in the space to take it, then your feedback is simply entirely pointless.”

What’s a lesson you learnt the hard way?

“I mean, I had this one time where I started doing a bad job cause I had a mental block that got created against my manager who I knew just piled the work onto me. But that wasn't how I enjoyed functioning at all.
Suppose I had 6 urgent tasks, and I were to lie in bed & stress about them - I'd rather stay awake & finish those 6 urgent things, than sleep.
Like, that’s how I am, so this whole cycle of me doing a bad job, is something I particularly struggled with. It genuinely made me wonder how to get myself out of that kind of situation. I was just pretty irritated that I got the feeling of quitting something cause I was doing a bad job, I think that was sort of when I learnt ‘It’s okay to walk away’ - I think that’s sort of when I learnt that lesson I guess. Doesnt mean that I didnt give myself grief for quitting, cause that definitely happened too!”