Preventing shiny object syndrome in the workplace includes narrowing your scope. This means limiting the number of projects you have because it’s so quick to drown in work when you can’t say no. Overloading on projects also means you’re likely to be working on things that are not worthwhile. So, we need to remove non-essential tasks and activities to free up more of your time to be spent on genuinely important things.
Research suggests that 2-3 projects at a time is optimal for individual focus and collective scheduling. Because organizations tend to implement a relatively large number of simultaneous projects, resource overload is a common problem in environments where projects are executed concurrently. If you’re asking people to juggle more than this, you run the risk of lowering their productivity.
Why You Need to Set the Scope On Your Business
Let’s face it, you can’t do everything. You must focus on what is important to be efficient, productive, and successful. To help you achieve this goal, we’ve put together some insights on how to set the scope on your business that will allow you to stay focused on the activities that will lead to success.
- Choose the right goals for your business
- Pick a handful of things that are relevant for now or future growth
- Make sure these things align with what matters most (both internally and externally)
It’s important to remember that you cannot do it all, so set your focus on doing the right things at the right time.
Make a List of Everything You Do in a Week
The first step to limit your scope is to break down what you do in a week into manageable chunks. It’s easy to get overwhelmed when we think about a huge project. However, if we break it down into smaller pieces, our brains can process it more easily. The result: we are less likely to take on more than we can handle.
If you’re having trouble identifying what all of the things are that you do in a week, there is no need to worry—we’re going to help you out! The key here is not necessarily getting specific about each task (although that would certainly be ideal), but rather making sure that you don’t leave anything off of your list. Tasks that aren’t written down or recorded can easily slide through the cracks. So let’s get started!
Narrow Your Scope by Categorizing Your Tasks
One of the most effective ways to limit your scope is by categorizing your tasks. You may already be doing some sort of task organization. But if not, I recommend using a spreadsheet or other type of software that allows you to organize your tasks into categories. Once you have these categories set up (or if you’re already using them), use them as a guide when deciding how important each task is for achieving your goal and how urgent it needs to be completed.
If that seems like too much work or too much prioritizing, there’s another option: try using the Eisenhower matrix! The Eisenhower matrix was invented by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who went on to become president of the United States in 1952—so we can safely say he knew what he was talking about here!
This is an easy way to prioritize based on importance vs urgency. Focus on what matters most first before moving on to something else that might come off as more urgent but isn’t quite as important. This will prevent burnout, shiny object syndrome, etc. I’ll explain those later.
Delegate Everything You Can Outsource
Delegating effectively is an art. The goal is to make more time for core business work, so you can focus on important tasks while ensuring the rest of your task list is still getting done too. Delegate everything you can and delegate it to the right person. Don’t forget to measure the performance of those delegated tasks, including accuracy and timeliness. You know that saying about the three monkeys? Never mind—just remember to measure!
Get Rid of Unnecessary Tasks
If you want to limit your scope and focus in the next month, then choose three things that are most important to your business and get rid of everything else.
If you don’t focus on what matters most, ‘shiny object syndrome’ will set in and it will be hard for you to get back on track.
The best way for me to explain this is through an example: I was making a lot of money with my online businesses when I decided to quit my job and start an online coaching business full-time. When I started the coaching business, all it took was one client paying $1,000 per month for me to realize that those clients were worth their weight in gold!
I had no idea how many millions of dollars these clients would be worth over time (or even just a few years), but they were earning me more than double what my job was paying me each year. So why did I continue working at my job?
Increase Profitability
The best way to limit your scope is to focus on the most profitable part of your business. This will help you get more customers and it will allow you to expand your business faster than ever before.
The second way is by focusing on the things that can make the biggest impact on your company. By focusing on this, then it means that you will be able to grow faster as well!
Another great way of limiting yourself is by focusing on what you can do to streamline your business. This includes considering how your business’ growth potentials, improvements, and automation processes work together. The goal here is to ensure that everything works together smoothly without any problems whatsoever! This can have a big impact not only on maintaining profit but also growing profits!
If you want to be profitable, you need to narrow your scope. Remember, don’t collect what you can’t implement, remove nonessential tasks, and prioritize what’s important.