Shiny object syndrome is the condition in which a person constantly starts new pursuits because they look fun and interesting, disregarding their current goals and ongoing activities. I personally suffered and suffer a lot from this condition, but acceptance is the first step towards improvement.
The danger of the shiny object syndrome is that at a first glance it is seen as virtuous, as a trade of a curious and well-rounded person. In practice, it is very detrimental to long-term goals. As the individual keeps hoping between multiple pursuits without getting the chance to actually make any meaningful progress on any of them, they become the infamous “Jack of all trades, master of none”.
At the end of the day, those new ideas and pursuits are just distractions from the main goals and pursuits that we actually care about. We ultimately trade our long-term success and fulfillment for instant gratification and excitement.
One of the causes of this is FOMO (Fear of missing out): we always want to be up to date with the latest and greatest ideas. But I think another and perhaps more deep motivation for this condition is that we want to feel the accomplishment of starting a new thing (the peak of “Mount Stupid” in the Dunning-Kruger Effect), but we dislike the discomfort of the plateaus and hardships that arise when we get a bit deeper into any subject. So, to avoid this discomfort we quit early on our endeavors to start some other pursuit and immediately get that beginner gratification.
This phenomenon can be seen in all areas of life. Some examples are:
- A new lifter who changes the routine every 2 weeks without getting the chance to actually see the results and evaluate any of them
- A programmer that learns the basics of every new tool/framework and ends up not capable of building anything with any of them
- A Linux user distro hopping without actually learning to use any distribution properly
The most important thing to overcome this condition is to accept that we cannot do everything, and trust that sticking with your current pursuits will be much more fruitful than chasing new shiny things.
Just stick with it long enough and you’ll see why you started it in the first place.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiny_object_syndrome
https://www.skool.com/synthesizers/techniques-to-overcome-shiny-object-syndrome