Sad, distracted, S-O-S suffering goldfish
According to a study by Microsoft Corporation. Human attention span has supposedly dropped from 12 seconds in 2002 to only eight seconds in 2013, which is a second shorter than a goldfish. I blame the dreaded Shiny Object Syndrome, but the good news is it doesn’t have to be that way. Read on...
How S.O.S. Is Driving Overwhelm and Underwhelming Results For Online Marketers
You know the feeling, I do too. You sit down to write a post, compose a sales message or film a video and BAM, alerts of all kinds are pinging you, email, SMS, iMessage, calls, facebook, instagram, snapchat, pinterest, and before you know it, the entire day has evaporated before your eyes, and whatever it was you sat down to do gets moved to the to-do list for tomorrow (along with all of the other items piling up that you wanted to get done, but haven’t). Welcome to SOS anonymous.
Shiny Objects show themselves in a variety of different and devious ways...from the alert badges on Clash of Clans, to Facebook’s Messenger, to the constant onslaught of new marketing tools, methods, and approaches that all promise to be the one thing that makes all the difference. However I’d like to propose a very different view...the only thing that makes the difference is saying no to Shiny-Object-Syndrome. Yup, profound I know, but stick with me on this one.
For some, this will mean carving out a disturbance free zone, both physically and on the calendar. Namely when you’re going to do the actual work, you power down your phone (airplane mode won’t turn off alerts), you close the door, and if you’re in a super cool open office or co-working space, slap on those epic noise cancelling headphones. Now that you’ve removed all those shiny, pinging, beeping distractions, next you need to make sure that you actually have it on the calendar. Even if it’s only a 15 minute block, the calendar is your accountability partner, or if you’re a South Park fan, your accountabil-a-buddy. After that appointment block is over, you know whether or not you kept the shiny objects at bay.
But JCron, I don’t have any issue with alerts, interruptions, or distractions, I’ve beaten Shiny-Object-Syndrome
Ah, I like the confidence, and let’s see if you’re really as impervious to the S-O-S as you think, since there is another form that’s far more destructive than the early stage we just discussed. This form is the advanced S-O-S that relates to the perpetual belief that the “next” trick or the “new” approach will be the one that will work.
The one that works is the one you make work - execution trumps knowledge every time
You’ve met the entrepreneurs that struggle with this version, they’re the group that each time you talk with them it’s the constant treadmill of learning the new method, trick, tip or hack...but never getting to the point of implementing it. Picture it as a process that at each inflection point that they’re ready to take it live, get it out there, and open for business, it quickly reverts to a new planning process, an different advertising strategy, a revised sales message, or heaven forbid a website or logo redesign.
I know it because I’ve done it
At Kajabi.com we see this all the time from AMAZING entrepreneurs that have unbelievable opportunities for success right within their reach. They have transformational information and knowledge to share with the world, borne of their passions, experiences, and challenges they’ve overcome. Yet the dreaded S-O-S monster continues to stop them from sharing it with the world.
Maybe you can relate?
Do you have a half-finished book?
A video course that’s just taking up room on your hard-drive?
A business you know could change your life and the lives of everyone it touches, but you can’t get the logo right?
If you look back at your entrepreneurial endeavors and see a land of partially finished projects, you may be suffering from S-O-S.
The tale of the bridge-less island
Ok, story time, and one heck of an impactful story it is, courtesy of my good friend Carl White.
Beautiful, but unfinished bridges
So imagine with me for a moment that you’re on an island. Heck make it any island you want. The key is you’re on an island in the middle of a large body of water (full of sharks and stuff so you can’t swim), and there is land all around you. Literally any direction you look, you can see land, and on that land is all of the resources you can imagine. Some directions you look seem to have a lot more resources, some have smaller amounts, but anywhere you look, there’s plenty of great things you’d like.
So you start building a bridge with the materials you’ve got on your island. And you’re an awesome bridge builder, I mean an epic bridge builder. You’re cranking on this thing, and you’re about half way to the land spot you chose, but then it happens. You’ve got a closer view of the land, and well, the resource pile is a bit smaller up close than you thought, and you remember that the view from the other side of the island you saw a much bigger resource pile. So you do what nearly every entrepreneur does...
You head to the other side of the island and start cranking on that bridge, but here’s where it goes awry, terribly awry.
You get that bridge half-finished, and then all of a sudden, you realize that you’re out of material and resources. You’ve got two half-built bridges. Neither of them long enough to reach land. Neither of them long enough to reach the other side and bring those resources back to the island. You’re now on an island, and you’ve got two half-built bridges.
What’s the moral of the story?
I’m so glad you asked. When you got halfway on a bridge, you saw the goal more closely, and maybe it was a bit different than you thought it would be. Maybe the niche wasn’t as big as you thought, or as profitable. Maybe it required more learning and study for you to do well, and another path looked easier. Whatever the reason, rather than finishing it and allowing it the opportunity to serve you in bringing resources back across the bridge, you stopped and switched. Leaving all of the sunk costs, with no return, only to start the same journey again.
So Carl had a real simple solution. Once you start building a bridge, finish it. No matter if you see one that may be better, easier, more fun, etc. because if you don’t finish the bridge, you can’t get the resources that it allows you to reach. The good news is after you finish the bridge, the resources it reaches can be used to build a second bridge, then a third, and so on until you’ve got all the finished bridges that you desire.
“Focus is a matter of deciding what things you're not going to do.”John Carmack