Learn How to Avoid the Shiny Object Syndrome

If we can learn how to avoid the shiny object syndrome, many of us will advance far in business.

Yep, I’m sure you have heard this one before.

Essentially, shiny object syndrome is a disease of distraction that often plagues entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs tend to be highly motivated, and they crave new technology and developments.

These are some of the great qualities that make entrepreneurs uniquely stand out. They aren’t afraid to test their new ideas and begin new startups.

When shiny object syndrome becomes an obsession, it forces one to chase project after project, never settling with one option. Once they get to the starting line and see what the object is, they immediately lose interest and start chasing the next big thing. For entrepreneurs, these are new marketing products, strategies, and even other business ventures.

Here is a quote from one of my great readers:

“Bright shiny object syndrome is something that I used to suffer with terribly, especially in the early days when I was eager to learn about how to make money online and was looking for every opportunity and every way possible to make money online. I can actually remember buying bright shiny objects and thinking that I had found a great product, only to buy another great shiny object for and even used previous shiny object! It was seriously bad, I'm not proud of this!” - Anonymous

However I wanted to express my alternative viewpoint on this very true (albeit somewhat overused) familiar term so you can see how far-reaching and damaging to our own productivity this one can be.

Let me call it this “Shiny and Dull Object Syndrome”.

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My Golden Rule #3: How To Avoid the Shiny Object Syndrome

In order to maintain laser focus on our most important tasks, here is My 2019 Golden Rule #3:

Thou Shall Not Chase Shiny and Dull Objects on any given day. Less important tasks will be performed only after my personal online business planned for the day is completed.

Don’t fall into these most common traps.

Don’t chase shiny (and dull) objects.

Chasing Shiny Objects: Don’t Do It

Chasing shiny objects is perhaps the biggest productivity-killer around.

We see the next best offer, get-rich-quick-scheme, or enticing product and follow the trail.

By nature as entrepreneurs, we often cannot help ourselves. We have to ADD something. We are allured by the novelty of the next exciting new product, endeavor, or business proposition.

We take on new projects and try to be everywhere, but in doing so get nowhere.

Like children or curious animals seeing something shiny far away, we get attracted to them, when we later realize upon a closer view the product or service we chased was a waste of time and money.

Even worse, we purchase the new product or begin our “exciting” new course only to lose interest and drop it after a short time period.

Examples of chasing “Shiny Objects”:

This is toxic behavior. Don’t take the bait.

But chasing dull objects can have as much of a detrimental effect on our productivity.

Chasing Dull Objects: A Big No-No!

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

One day I was making great progress with the training and building a new website, I built up strong momentum. When I began to save the content of my research for later retrieval in bookmarks.

Okay, that makes good sense.

While doing this logical action that should take only a few seconds, I noticed that my bookmark folders were highly disordered and in disarray, i.e., my WordPress folders were in the Google section, my SEO folders were in BLOG WRITING, etc.

Seeing this was disturbing, and I couldn’t stand it.

So I diverted from my main work and began re-organizing my folders, searching through many different ones and redirecting the sub-folders, and even the sub-sub folders into their correct main folders.

One ½ hour passed.

In the process of reorganizing, I ran across a few interesting articles on SEO I had saved previously that I read before which I began to re-read. My brain told me re-reading these articles was important to shore up my SEO knowledge, which would gain me great benefits later. This led me to a 2nd SEO article.

Another 90 minutes passed.

STOP IT!  Why am I doing this NOW?

Was this necessary at all?

Would the earth have ceased revolving and my business stopped functioning if I didn’t re-organize my folders AT THIS TIME while I had already gained good momentum doing the training and building my new website?

No.

Instead of wasting a total of 2 Hours, this time should have been spent continuing the training and building my website. And worse, it completely KILLED the momentum I previously had built!

This is what I call the Dull Object Syndrome.

Just as with shiny objects…..

Don’t fall for chasing dull objects.

Focus ONLY on the most important tasks at hand at the moment, which in this case was doing the training and building a new website.

How To Avoid the Shiny Object Syndrome:  Eliminate Visual and Audible Distractions

Eliminating such visible and audible distractions will help you stray away from Shiny and Dull Object Syndrome.

Stay Away From the Sneaky Distractions

There comes a time when we all need to make very important decisions. Hard decisions but rather necessary ones.

Decisions that can change our entire year.

Ones that can alter the arc of an online business’s momentum straight out of the start gate.
Let this serve as an important reminder.

I hope My Golden Rule #3 will truly help you to maintain your laser focus on those most important tasks at the moment and to keep you away from those sneaky distractions that inevitably can creep in.

Above all, I hope you learn how to avoid the shiny object syndrome.

Please leave any comments below.