On Friday evening, Joe pulls out his planner and looks at the list of all the things he wanted to complete during the week. As he looks at the list, he grows more and more discouraged at the number of things he didn’t get done. He can’t understand it. Why didn’t he accomplish more? He was always so busy, yet so little got finished. How could this have happened?
You may know a Joe, live with a Joe, or be a Joe yourself. The Joes of the world have a difficult time focusing and are easily distracted by ''shiny objects'' — i.e., things that take attention off of the task at hand because of their allure, appeal, or perceived urgency. Sure, at times we’ve all succumbed to pointless distractions and wasted time being unproductive or working on something that didn’t need to be done right then. It’s when a person’s modus operandi is to allow themselves to be constantly distracted that problems occur.
Let me put shiny objects in context. To me, a shiny object isn’t important to the task at hand and isn’t time-sensitive. If something comes across your desk that can be done later without impact to your work yet interrupts what you’re doing then, this, in my view, constitutes a shiny object. It’s also important to distinguish between shiny objects and the garden-variety fire drill. The primary difference to me is that a fire drill is something that needs to be done immediately or otherwise there will be some material and tangible business consequence, whereas with a shiny object, there’s no material and tangible business consequence if it doesn’t get done. This is an important distinguishing factor because many shiny object violators that I know view their shiny objects as fire drills and take comfort in responding to fire drills because of the sense of accomplishment they feel in putting out the fire.
To conquer shiny-object-itis, I’ve adopted a few basic shiny object principles into my workday, as follows:
- Schedule some brief ''shiny object'' time during the day to do some of the shiny object activities, preferably the same time each day. The time of day doesn’t matter, just schedule it and keep to it.
- If a shiny object comes your way and it’s not during your shiny object time, put it aside immediately. Just as a dieter needs to resist the temptation of their favorite junk food, you need to resist the draw and allure of the shiny object.
- If you’re prone to disruption due to your view of fire drills, ask yourself two questions:
- Is there a tangible and material consequence to me working on this?
- Is the consequence important enough that I need to interrupt my current project to work on it?
If the answers are yes, then by all means pull out the hose; otherwise, refer back to principle two.
About the Author
Lonnie Pacelli is an internationally recognized author and is president of Leading on the Edge International. Lonnie has had over 20 years of leadership experience as an executive, project manager, developer, tester, analyst, trainer, consultant, and business owner. During his 11 years at Accenture, he built leadership expertise consulting with many Fortune 500 companies, including Motorola, Hughes Electronics, and Northrop Grumman. During his nine years at Microsoft, he continued building leadership expertise through the development of some of Microsoft’s internal systems, leading their corporate procurement group, managing their corporate planning group, and leading company-wide initiatives on continuous fiscal improvement and training-process optimization. He has successfully implemented projects ranging from complex IT systems to process reengineering to business strategies.
See more on Lonnie at www.leadingonedge.com and www.smallbizmadesimple.com.
