Chasing the shiny object

I've been thinking a lot lately about distractions.
We all have certain things that are most important to us, be they in our personal life, our work life, our just in "life."
We work on them because of their importance.
Then, and sometimes it seems too often, something else comes up that grabs our attention and energy.
Only latter, after it has passed, do we realize that this "something else" was not as important as we thought at the time but it had pulled our attention and energy away from what we normally feel is a priority.
Some people refer it this phenomenon as "chasing the shinny object."

It's non-productive.  Worse, the distraction sucks up our time and energy.
I'll start a day knowing I have a few priority items to accomplish and if not careful, someone will come to me with an "issue" and I'll find myself chasing distractions. If I'm not careful, I'll find myself at the end of the day where I find my priorities not yet addressed.
It happens with groups of people too.
Some issue comes up and one party wants to avoid discussing it so they bring up another issue and voilà, distraction.

Right now, we face a multitude of priority issues; attacks on the rights of workers to stand together in unity, attacks on our healthcare system, attacks on our public school system, attacks on environmental protection; questions that threaten our sovereignty, and more.
No matter where you stand on these issues, I think everyone agrees resolving them would be a priority.
The last thing we need are distractions.
The last thing we need is to divert our time and energy whenever there is a new comment, tweet, or post about something not related to our priorities.

We need to stay focused and on track.