I’ve seen it in my own life and in the lives of all my friends.
Being disciplined feels harder nowadays. Not just for the emotional discomfort. We also face distractions that pose as opportunities. From diets to starting a business, the world is full of shiny new opportunities.
But, since time and focus are limited, we cannot follow all these paths.
The Paradox of Choice and the Shiny Object Syndrome.
In a world connected by the Internet, it feels like we have countless choices.
- Search for a diet, and what you find is anything from keto to people who claim to live only with sunrays.
- Workouts range from weightlifting to swimming to the ridiculous plans you can follow while sitting in front of a PC.
You carefully consider a plan, initiate it, and when challenges arise, you select a new path.
In his book “The Paradox of Choice”, Barry Schwartz explains how having too many choices creates decision paralysis and doubt. This leads to overthinking and impatience. And that’s why the new, shiny opportunities look so appealing and distract from our initial plan. From an external perspective, every diet, workout, and business plan appear effortless. However, once you start following them, you begin to notice the difficulties and, often, the sheer boredom and repetitiveness they bring.
That’s why, for example, nowadays most marketing messages present workouts as fun and easy, while they should be repetitive and challenging.
Choose a simple, unoptimized plan and stick to it.
The simplest way to win this war against shiny object syndrome is to pick a simple plan and stick to it for 90 days.
Don’t try to improve it by adding something new. Just pick one and trust the process. A friend of mine makes this mistake all the time: he picks a plan and, before applying it, tries to optimize it. He rationalizes this because he considers himself an “optimizer”. As a result, even after 10 years, he continues to strive for six-pack abs, and instead of losing weight, he is gradually gaining it back.
Years ago, I decided to follow this rule: “Choose a plan in less than 30 minutes, stick to it for 90 days, trust the process and, every time a new shiny object comes along, just say to yourself that you’ll try it if this plan doesn’t work”.
So far, the first plan has always worked faster than expected.