Imagine you are Little Red Riding Hood.
Yeah, that’s a weird name for a child…
You remember the story, right?
Her mom gives her a basket of treats to take to her sick grandmother who lives through the woods. In the story, Little Red Riding Hood is lured off the path by the wolf who convinces her that her grandmother would probably also like a pretty bouquet of flowers. So LR spends a few hours gleefully picking flowers.
Meanwhile the wolf uses the information gleaned from Little Red about where her grandmother lives, and, pretending to be her, weasels his way into her house, eats her, and then awaits LR’s arrival, when he will get to have another, juicier meal…as well as whatever is in the treat basket.
By “juicier meal” I mean he’s going to eat her. Just wanted to make that clear.
Shiny object syndrome is the name given to being distracted from your goal by other things, either things that seem more fun, things that seem like they might HELP your goal, or things that seem easier than your goal.
In the story, LR is only distracted from her goal temporarily, but because she loses time picking flowers, grandmother dies and then LR ALSO gets eaten.
(Sure, you’ll say, but the woodsman comes along and cuts the wolf open while he sleeps, but how realistic is it that two grown humans devoured by a ravenous wolf come out intact in the end? Seriously?)
In my version of the story, I also like to imagine that the woods is a slightly more modern space, and thus full of other people’s trash. In addition to picking flowers, LR can’t help herself and feels the need to take it entirely upon herself to clean up the path along the way.
Leave it…
In my analogy, the trash represents all of the chores that we happily ignore every day until we can use them as a convenient excuse for why we can’t do something toward our goal that we’re scared to go after. It can also represent the constant needs of others that we allow to get in the way, instead of setting healthy boundaries and protecting our personal needs.
So, we have shiny objects (the good stuff that distracts us) and trash (the mundane chores and everyday fires-we-must-put-out).
If you give your time to either of these things, Granny is in danger of dying.
Your own goal may or may not be time-sensitive, but timing can be very important when it comes to opportunities.
Pop quiz:
Someone tells you a client is looking for a voice actor for a job.
Do you:
a. email them immediately
b. think “I’ll do that right after I watch another episode of Schitt’s Creek”
c. forget because you have laundry to do, need to make lunch for the kids, and the dishes haven’t been done in three days, and oh, yeah, I need to make a dentist appointment, etc
d. start researching other side hustles that seem like less work, because voiceover is harder than you thought it was going to be
I can tell you from my own experience earlier this summer, sometimes you sleep on an opportunity for even 30 minutes, and it’s already gone. Sometimes that will happen. You can’t always control it.
When you have a goal that is time sensitive, you need to put off the distractions until you get to your goal, even if they SEEM urgent.
If no one needs to go to the hospital or your house isn’t on fire, then it can probably wait.
So, are you going to let granny die? Or are you going to get to her house and save her from that wolf before you both savor some delicious pastries?
Fun fact: pastries taste better when you’ve earned them by saving the life of a family member