AI FOMO is real, and there’s a version of it that doesn’t get talked about enough. It isn’t only the fear of losing your job to AI. It’s the fear that while you’re heads-down shipping work, someone else is building something that will change everything. Here’s why you can’t chase both at once, and why that’s fine.
The scroll guilt
Scrolling my phone fills me with a particular kind of guilt at the moment. I’m deep in a handful of complex, exciting client projects, and phone time means I’m not working on them.
When I do scroll, my feed is full of impressive people doing incredible things with AI. You know the ones: people who appear to have it spectacularly together. Autonomous agents talking to each other around the clock. Deals closed by clever integrations. Entire call centres replaced with a few prompts.
I’m proud of what we’re building with AI. But mid-scroll, late on a deadline night, I get an unsettling feeling bordering on horror. Somewhere, while I’m heads-down, someone might be building something that will 10x their business, and I can’t see it. That’s because the mental state you need to spot the big new possibilities doesn’t fit with the mental state you need to do serious work.
Depth mode and breadth mode
I’ve been reading The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr. It’s excellent. But I’m not reading it the way I normally would, because it’s feeding a brand project I’m working on.
When I pick up a book with no project attached, my mind wanders. It makes unexpected connections and follows threads sideways. There’s a breadth to it that’s hard to manufacture on purpose.
With Storr, I’m scanning for what’s directly relevant and zooming in on concepts I can use this week. Same book, same sentences, narrower beam.
Neither is wrong. They’re different mental states. Depth mode ships the project. Breadth mode finds what changes everything. (Not official names. I made them up.) You can’t run both at once.
Two kinds of AI FOMO in the same room
At Marketers Day, a marketing conference in Auckland, both versions of AI FOMO were in the room.
One was familiar: job fear. Pew Research has found that more workers are worried about AI than hopeful about it. The American Psychological Association reports that 38% of psychologists fear their role could become obsolete. ADP found that only 35% of C-suite executives feel their roles are secure. The worry runs all the way up the org chart.
The other was different. There were people in that room building extraordinary things: custom platforms and sophisticated models that made you feel behind just sitting there.
Don’t overlook the obvious uses of AI
Right now I’m using AI intensely on my two biggest client projects. Not on a custom platform, but on one of its most basic capabilities: reading unstructured language at scale.
Interviews, recorded conversations, forum threads: the actual words customers use to describe their problems. Building a picture of your customer has always been limited by time. You could only read so many interviews. AI removes that ceiling. What took weeks of synthesis now surfaces in hours, and the insight is deeper because the input is bigger.
It doesn’t remove the judgement. Someone still has to decide which insight is signal and which is noise, and make the call on messaging. AI gives you a richer portrait. The human decides what to do with it.
Pick a road and walk it hard
Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken is usually read as a tribute to the bold individualist who picks the clever path. But Frost says plainly that the two roads were worn “really about the same”. The poem is about the story we tell ourselves afterwards, and the meaning we give to choices that were fairly arbitrary at the time.
Walking the road hard is depth mode. Scouting other roads is breadth mode. Frost’s speaker doesn’t stand at the fork forever. He commits, which means he stops surveying the alternatives.
No certain path exists, and worrying about everyone else’s road doesn’t build yours. Get back to your desk. That product isn’t going to ship itself.
If you’d like to step back and think through where AI and marketing can do strategic work in your business, book 30 minutes with me.
Questions people ask
What is AI FOMO?
The fear of missing out on AI: either that AI will take your job, or that others are using it to pull ahead while you’re busy with day-to-day work.
How do you deal with AI FOMO as a business leader?
Separate the two modes. Set aside deliberate time to explore new tools, and protect focused time to deliver. Trying to do both at once does neither well.
What’s the most useful everyday use of AI in marketing?
Reading unstructured language at scale: interviews, calls and forum threads. It surfaces how customers describe their problems far faster, with a human still deciding what matters.
This article first appeared in Bright Objects, my fortnightly newsletter on brand, marketing strategy and AI for business and tech leaders. Subscribe here.
Sources and further reading
- Will Storr, The Science of Storytelling
- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
- American Psychological Association, Psychologists increase uptake of AI tools, but cautions persist
- ADP Research, Today at Work
If you know your business is all steak and needs some sizzle….. we’d love to hear from you.
Dave Hayward
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Warm personal stories wrapped around solid business, revenue and marketing strategy, how-tos, technology discussion (especially AI), philosophies and tactics. Occasionally, we’ll talk about personal productivity and things important to us (like astronomy and dogs).
