Trending
Distractions can easily become a limiting factor within your financial life. The more distractions you have, the less clarity about your direction and decisions. With 2025 about to start, it’s a good time to address how to limit distractions so that you can move toward your most important goals in the year ahead.
The Top 4 Distractions Facing Investors
Best selling author Shane Parrish (Clear Thinking), says “Distractions are the assassins of great work. You don’t need more time; more focus. Time expands when you eliminate interruptions. Your attention, not the clock, ultimately limits what you can achieve.”
Distractions can take many different forms. Let’s look at four major types of distractions: anxiety, complexity, family/friends, and emergencies.
1. Anxiety
Most of the anxiety you have is really misplaced worry about things you can’t control. While you can’t totally eliminate anxiety, you can avoid making decisions based on your level of anxiousness. Anxiety can be like an open app on your device, always running in the background. It can take valuable energy away from more important things.
If you have written down your long-term financial goals and aspirations, your anxiousness will subside. Conversely, if you don’t have well defined written goals, every day tends to be centered around anxiety about the uncertainty ahead.
2. Complexity
You probably don’t think about complexity as being a distraction, but needless complexity can certainly take your gaze off of the long-term. There are literally thousands of different types of investments and strategies all vying for your attention. Add to this the hundreds of distinct types of investment accounts and you have a ready-made formula for complexity.
Unnecessary complexity often obscures important investment details such as liquidity and cost. If the investment or financial strategy you are considering is so complex that you can’t fully understand it, this can become an ongoing mental distraction.
3. Family & Friends
Your family and friends mean well of course, but their aspirations and goals likely differ materially from your own. Your work colleague or neighbor may have solid financial habits or they may not. Usually your family and friends only talk about investment successes and omit their failures.
4. Emergencies
From time to time, you may encounter a true financial emergency, but it should be rare. Most financial emergencies are the direct result of poor planning and lack of attention. If you’re actively engaged in the financial planning process, you should not have emergencies. Ask yourself: is the “emergency” real, or is it only an emergency because of poor planning?
To the extent that you do experience financial emergencies, they can be a tremendous time drain and distraction. Emergencies shift your focus away from the long-term and replace it with a spotlight on the near-term. If you find that you are just moving from one “emergency” to the next, that’s a clear signal that your financial planning efforts should be improved.
Stay Focused in 2025!
Your financial aspirations are made up of ‘big things’ that are important to you and your family. You can’t achieve these goals if you are continually distracted by “small things” in everyday life. Resolve to maintain your gaze on what matters most. Start there. Ready for a real conversation?
Related: Is Fear Driving You Away From Your Investment Goals?