Your Goals Are Shiny Objects

Personal goals can be forceful, constraining, and honestly, super boring. They force you to behave in repeatable, predictable ways… ways you don’t want to behave when you want to do something new, fun or exciting.

There is this idea of shiny object syndrome: the tendency to be immediately interested in the newest idea, meme, or trend that catches our attention. A lot of us experience it. Shiny object syndrome happens to us partly because people experience the cognitive bias of recency effect: we recall easiest what was most recent in our memory. And in our age of texts, emails, tweets, and push notifications, shiny objects run amok.

It’s safe to say shiny object syndrome can de-rail you from the habits you’re trying to stick to that will move you closer to your goals. For instance, say I set a goal to hit the gym three times a week after work on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. One Wednesday, before hitting the gym after work, I plan to stop by Gamestop because of a new game that just came out from my favorite video game company. After purchasing the game, instead of heading to the gym, I go straight home and play the game.

Definitely didn’t hit my goal that week.

While it’s admittedly boring to do the same behaviors over and over (and over) again, what if there was a way we could treat our own goals as shiny objects? What might this look like?

Going to the gym would become the most exciting part of your day instead of the most dreadful part. Most weeknights you find yourself anticipating going to work the next day because the first thing you’re going to tackle is moving forward a challenging project. You start FaceTiming your parents more often than they FaceTime you because you literally can’t wait to hear what they’re up to.

The pursuit towards your goals would shift from being boring and repetitive to exciting and meaningful.

Imagine how better off we’d be if this were the case.