This article seeks to help those hoping to change careers or simply their direction in life; especially those who are faced with the overwhelming plethora of options available to us today.
Definition: The tendency for someone to chase something new, be it a new business idea, tool, or goal, rather than to stay focused on what they’re doing. It is similar to a child who is attracted to anything that’s shiny and new.
TLDR:
1. Be mindful and understand that you’re afflicted by SOS
2. Actually invest into something and act, instead of ‘researching’ and overthinking
3. Don’t fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy à contemplate your life if you don’t take massive action now
4. Practice gratitude and be happy with what you have à also play to your current strengths instead of trying to improve weaknesses or creating new strengths
5. Learn to prioritize and stick to your priorities; Warren Buffett’s 25 and 5 rule
……..
Realtor
Digital marketing
Facebook marketing
Google Adwords/ SEO consultant
Dropshipping
Meditation teacher
Yoga instructor
Life coach
Spiritual and wellness guru
Motivational speaker
Author
Dog walker
Mycelium manufacturer
Sales coach
English teacher abroad
Podcaster
T-shirt business
Clothing brand
Moving company
Cleaning company
Udemy course creator
App developer
SaaS entrepreneur
MBA / MA student
Barista
Tea wholesaler
Professional Airbnb host
Comedian
Painter (houses not like Picasso)
YouTuber
Amateur MMA fighter
I have seriously considered each and every career on the above list, this year.
It makes my head spin even to collate the list for the purposes of this article. I also have to admit, I haven’t fully given up on at least 8 of these.
What is Shiny Object Syndrome?
It’s essentially the disease of distraction.
You start working on something but then never finish because something novel, exciting and new has enticed you.
In today’s age of digital advertising, aggressive and personalized marketing and limitless options, it’s hard not to be seduced by the ‘new’. To dream endlessly.
It’s also been proven that in dreaming of all the possible scenarios for wealth, success and happiness, we can lull ourselves into a false sense of security and thus, inaction.
Many of my friends suffer from SOS and we often discuss how it’s a predominantly millennial and gen Z affliction. We are born of the internet age where anything is not only possible but encouraged.
YouTube and Instagram show us what our lives could be and show us legitimately ordinary people who are actually doing it.
Sure that Lambo might be rented but shit, they’re obviously able to afford groceries and shooting videos sounds better than sitting in a cubicle swallowing rations of shit from Sandra in accounting right?
The secret is, we want to be sold. We want to believe there is something better out there for us. The answer to our prayers for happiness. That’s how marketing works, it makes us dissatisfied with what we currently have and makes us crave something new and different. We think that the new object, career or person will somehow cure us.
The problem is, this masturbatory content doesn’t actually produce any tangible results. We just drown in ideas, dreaming and weighing options.
Or there’s the disillusioned cadre — ‘oh they make it look easy but it’s oversaturated’; ‘you have to live in California for that’; ‘it’s all fake bro’.
No it’s not ‘all fake’.
Yes, I could do it.
It’s not oversaturated.
Fuck off.
The problem is with being stretched too thin.
Think about it, imagine your energy and capacity for greatness is akin to the beam on a a laser pointer…
Point at a wall from 1 ft away, your get a clear, sharp and dense dot: focused energy. As you step back to maybe 6 feet, the circumference of the dot widens, covering a larger surface area on the wall.
Similarly, our ‘dot’ or our focus and energy can be sharp and focused on one narrow point OR it can be spread wide, encompassing many things but faint and weak.
We need to focus our efforts, concentrate them unwaveringly for better results.
How to know if you have Shiny Object Syndrome (SOS):
- You’re always thinking about other businesses/ careers
- You’re always discussing these ideas with others
- You’re known as the ‘idea’ guy or gal
- You have had a hundred ‘million dollar’ ideas and executed on zero
- You have started several careers or projects, never finishing one
- You spent countless hours ‘researching’, never pulling the trigger
- The thing you’re currently working on is the best thing since sliced bread but the thing that interested you last month now sounds like the dumbest idea ever
Shiny object syndrome is a massive time thief. Here’s how you can fight it:
5 Ways to Combat SOS:
1. Be mindful and reflective; understand that you’re afflicted by SOS and accept it.
The first step to fixing any problem is realizing that you have it in the first place. Consult the above list to see if you suffer from any of the symptoms and be honest with yourself.
Ask your nearest and dearest if you have these tendencies.
Don’t feel judged or embarrassed, just know that you have something you need to deal with if you want to live a more focused and peaceful life.
2. Actually invest into something and act, instead of ‘researching’ and overthinking
It’s fine to have lots of varied interests. It’s not good to stay one dimensional and closed off to new things.
Many people live life like this.
How many of us know people that are totally happy doing the same things, having the same conversations over and over and over and over again.
Screw that. Life is about variety and evolution, embrace that.
I’ll admit that I was very closed minded and arrogant in my 20s, reluctant to try anything new for risk of failure and embarrassment. As such my short time in my 30s so far has been one of exploration and adventure.
I have shattered my very narrow narrative of the successful sales guy living in New York.
I grew tired of it. I knew there must be more to life.
Everyone around me was settling down. Promotions. House. Kids. Florida.
Nothing wrong with this, but I needed more.
In shattering my fragile identity, I have been able to explore meditation, Buddhism, Tony Robbins, psychedelics, martial arts, carpentry, digital content production and am even signed up to severl Udemy courses (a basic MBA course, real estate economics, video production etc).
I have spent thousands of dollars on finding where my interests lie, where I want to focus my attention going forward.
I flew to Thailand to learn how to fight muay thai and I literally believed that I might become an amateur fighter or a pad holder or a gym owner some day.
I committed to that vision.
I wasn’t just a tourist ‘dipping my toes in’.
I invested.
I eventually realized martial arts is something I want to do as a serious hobby as it definitely puts me into my flow state but it’s not a real career.
On returning from Asia I signed up to a $1000, 200 hour meditation teacher training course. Again, when I started I thought I was just going to be a mediation teacher full time and spread the wonderful skills I’d learned in Nepal.
I wanted to expand my knowledge seriously, beyond just downloading the Headspace app. I got about 50% into the course, learned a ton of interesting stuff about meditation, from the history to the techniques. I also deepened my own practice significantly, which is already paying dividends in my own life.
I no longer want to pursue this as a career.
I felt like a bit of a phony as I hadn’t meditated for long enough personally and didn’t want to be one of these fly by night ‘gurus’. Also to be frank with you, I felt myself getting a little bored and realized that if I continued down this path then it might strip my own motivation to meditate and I couldn’t risk that.
I love pizza but if I worked in a pizza restaurant, I might start to hate it. I didn’t want that to happen to me for one of the most important tools I’d learned for dealing with life.
Someone recently reached out to me for a co-founder opportunity for a real estate tech platform. This is absolutely my area of expertise, my background in sales is from this industry.
I dove in wholeheartedly, thinking it made perfect sense as it was my area of expertise and a bit ‘safer’ than muay thai and meditation (read: people would think I was less crazy).
I spent about 4 weeks revising this guy’s pitch deck, discussing the business plan and nearly even booked a flight to San Diego where his company was based.
I was fully, 100% invested.
The equity discussion wasn’t to my liking so we parted ways but I was ready to pull the trigger.
None of the toe dipping shit. I was ready for that to be my life. CRO of X company, I’d visualized it and done the work.
Now on the surface of it, this all sounds like the journey of a dangerously erratic person who doesn’t know what they want right?
WRONG.
If you’re trying to break free from the dreaded cycle of starting and not finishing things… this is a necessary part of the process: OPTION REMOVAL. See, in the future I will never wonder whether I could have been a meditation teacher or a muay thai fighter/ coach because I already went down those paths.
Instead of standing at the 0 mile marker of a 100 mile path and researching it all to death, I walked to the 3 mile marker to see what it’s all about.
Realizing something is not for you is totally OK if you actually commit, live and breathe it and then decide.
The affliction we suffer from: SOS, is fueled by rosy depictions of various careers on social media.
We’re led to believe everything is easy and fun because we only see the ‘end result’ or worse, the ‘fake results’ (rented Lambos and such). By investing time and money, you are committed; this makes you understand the full process it will take.
It helps you decided educatedly whether you could actually do this for the next 5/ 10 or 20 years.
Remember, we seek to find the thing that we will happily do for free 24/7/365.
3. Don’t fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy. Contemplate your life if you don’t take massive action now
Many people are paralyzed by fear of action. They convince themselves that having spent X number of years in a job or industry means they’re stuck there for life.
Many others have unsupportive family members or even colleagues who won’t benefit from your journey of self exploration and convince you to stick out the status quo. Maybe buy a new car, take a vacation or go for a promotion — yeah that’ll fix it.
Just because your narrative has been X for so long, doesn’t mean it can’t be Y.
Just because you’ve invested 15 years into your salubrious career as a digital media executive or a doctor doesn’t mean you can’t still become a sommelier or an art appraiser.
Consider the following.
A 13 day old baby and a 24 year old Scottish man have both died from Covid this year.
From Covid.
The virus you hadn’t heard of 8 months ago.
Now, I want you to close your eyes and think about how long you really have left on this planet. It could be around 10 years or as many as 60+. Either way, contemplate how short of a time that is.
Have you ever met someone and thought: ‘damn I wish I’d met you 10 years ago so we could have had more time’? In curing our shiny object syndrome, we might be able to find the one or two things that give us maximum pleasure on this earth.
Wouldn’t it be awesome to settle on something that brings us joy and simply do it until our last breath?
That’s what the cure to SOS seeks to bring you.
Satisfaction. The removal of that craving, yearning and coveting. The ability to be happy with what you have and stop looking for greener pastures. If you don’t break out of this unhealthy cycle, one day it really could be too late. Time waits for no-one.
Seeing the litany of options we have available to us also gives us a false sense of security: there are endless options and endless iterations of yourself that could be successful.
Just that thought alone can satiate people, lull them into a false sense of security that there is time.
This is a falsehood.
A comforting mirage.
Anyone who has built something worthwhile has done so painstakingly over years. They have benefitted from the compound effect, essentially reaping massive future rewards from small actions taken today.
So don’t wait any longer. Start the process of figuring out what you’re supposed to spend your time on.
4. Play to your current strengths instead of trying to improve weaknesses or creating new strengths
If starting from absolute scratch is just too scary or you’re not that into anything that is a huge departure from your current situation, that’s OK. Maybe start with evaluating your current skills and what you enjoy about your current role and go from there.
Whether you’re 0, 10 or 20 years into a career and considering a change, just know that you have skills.
Consider that even though you could still be an astronaut, having spent the last 10 years as a chef, it’s probably best to focus on things you’re already good at.
That does not mean stay typecast and stick to your current profession. It means you should list out your current transferable skills, your current network, the opportunities in your geography (identify gaps). Then start matching this up against your big list of career you want to pursue. Scratch off anything that, though possible, will simply take too long. If you’re a chef but you’re interested in construction… maybe being good with your hands, having a practical mind and ability to work under pressure will smooth the transition to your new career.
If you’re currently a mid 30s musician and you now want to be a Fortune 500 CEO, I’m not discouraging you, it just reduces the chances you’ll be able to achieve this in the next 10 or so years. Thus increasing the likelihood you’ll give up along the way.
The benefit of doing things you know you’ll be good at especially when you’re doing a career change, is that you will get immediate positive feedback.
The chef will immediately take to bricklaying and get satisfaction.
The former comedian may also get great feedback in a sales environment for their ability to make people smile and build rapport.
This initial positive feedback will tell your mind you’re on the right path and help you stay the course.
I worked in sales for just shy of a decade. My transferable skills include but are not limited to:
o Sales
o Client retention
o Negotiation
o Writing
o Networking
Instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and applying to be a chef in a Japanese restaurant, I’d be better off considering careers where I have the opportunity to flex the skills I already possess.
This is not a contradiction. You can still do whatever you want, but it might expedite the search if you look for things that are complementary to your current skill set.
For me right now, digital marketing, writing, content creating, speaking and real estate all look like sensible bets for me and I am evaluating them all to some degree.
5. Learn to prioritize and stick to your priorities; Warren Buffett’s 25 and 5 rule
I’ll be honest. I can’t just pick one thing.
Whether I’m too risk averse or whether I’m just too lost in SOS, I’m not sure but I am currently pursuing 2 things.
I know the dangers of being spread too thin.
I know I am a hypocrite right now.
The two things aren’t even similar.
However, I think that prioritizing things has helped to bring me a lot of clarity and honestly, being able to focus on 2 things out of 25+ that I was seriously and equally considering very recently seems like a win to me.
Warren Buffett famously coined the 25–5 principle and I urge you to try it if you’re helplessly locked into too many ideas.
Write down 25 things you would really love to do with your time.
Stream of consciousness, anything that comes to mind. In your wildest dreams.
Buffett then says, circle the top 5 things that interest you.
Then never focus on the remaining 20 again.
The point Warren is making here is that life is too short to do everything we want. Also in highlighting the top 5, we know in our guts that the others are not that important or attractive to us. Has anyone ever become successful and told an interviewer: oh yes, I knew I’d become X, ever since my childhood this has been my #6 favorite thing to do? No.
I’d personally go a step further and strip it down to the 25–3 rule. I like things in 3s and I don’t really think you can focus on more than that at a time.
For me, it’s writing, real estate and my martial arts. Only one of them is a true professional goal, the others are just for fun with potential upside to monetize some day.
More than anything, you need to remember that in ridding yourself of SOS, you’re not saying you will never try anything new again. You just need to focus on one thing for now, get really good at it, see it through to the end and then you can do the next thing.
I believe we should reinvent ourselves every 5 years or so. This is not a new theory, I think Tim Ferris, Naval Ravikant and the avant garde tech minds of today tend to subscribe to this idea.
The goal is to build skills over time, not careers. Skills that can help you when you tackle that next shiny object in your life.
Good luck to you.
