When it comes to staying motivated in pursuit of your goals, it’s not about whether others influence you, but how and by how much. When working with others, you need a way to check whether you are productively or unproductively focusing on others.
As humorously illustrated in the popular movie I Love You, Man, when working toward goals, there are two ways to focus on others: the “Bro-Date” method and the “Billboard” method.
Billboards are better, but we often unknowingly push ourselves to make time-wasting Bro-Dates.
1. The Bro-Date method
At the beginning of the movie, Peter (played by Paul Rudd) proposes to his girlfriend Zooey (played by Rashida Jones), and she enthusiastically says yes.
When they are together alone, things go very well. But when Zooey’s girlfriends express their discomfort that Peter doesn’t have many male friends, things change. Zooey gets nervous and Peter sets off in search of more male friends.
There’s nothing wrong with having more friends, but the distorted urgency created by their shared concern over the misgivings of Zooey’s girlfriends leads Peter into a series of uncomfortable time-wasting “Bro-Dates.”
In a ridiculous variation on online dating infidelity, Peter meets a potential friend whose image on the internet presents him as several decades younger. From another man who misinterprets Peter’s non-romantic intentions, Peter receives two vigorous, unwanted kisses, and then a series of embarrassing public insults.
There is nothing wrong with Peter and Zooey listening to their girlfriends, who offer well-intentioned information, based on their own experiences and perceptions. The mistake Peter and Zooey make is subtly substituting their girlfriend’s perspective for their own and letting it become the main source of motivation for their actions. Girlfriends identify a problem, but it is their problem, not Peter and Zooey’s problem.
Peter and Zooey cut and paste the opinions of the girlfriends into their own way of thinking, rather than discerning the difference between considering the information and internalizing someone else’s concerns.
That’s the wrong way to be led by others: substituting your own for other people’s perspectives. It is often harder to resist than we think. When there are many of “them” who seem to share the same point of view, and express it with good intentions, strength and confidence, we can lose our way.
It gets worse. Because your persuasive efforts can be so powerful, we end up struggling to solve someone else’s problem, which is a product of their experiences and biases rather than ours.
However, if we look closely, there are usually clues that we can see. In the movie, for example, Zooey’s girlfriends have a lot of trouble in their own relationships. It turns out that their opinions come more from idiosyncratic emotional baggage associated with their own romantic failures than from objectively sound advice based on successful experience.
That’s the catch: with the Bro-Date method of focusing on others, we can’t solve the problem because it’s not a bear in the first place. Instead, it exists in the emotional domain of another person. We run in circles, unknowingly prompted by someone else’s biases, but for a time under the illusion that we must be progressing because of the effort we are expending. By the time we escape the cycle, if at all, it is often too late. If we focus on the wrong priorities for too long, we lose valuable time and energy and, like Peter and Zooey, we risk damaging relationships.
2. The remedy to the Bro-Date method: two key questions
If you are stuck in the Bro-Date cycle of wasting time and energy on efforts that don’t help you progress, the remedy lies in two key questions: (1) What is most important? and (2) Who is more important?
These questions are designed to help you focus on your own genuine priorities, because the Bro-Date Method diverts us from other people’s priorities. Any of them can break the Bro-Date cycle.
What Matters Most? is the question of purpose. It asks you to consider for the subject at hand what your true and number one source of motivation is.
Who Matters More? is the person’s question. It asks you to consider for the problem at hand, who is your main stakeholder, the person whose reaction matters most to you.
The mistake both Peter and Zooey made was focusing on the wrong purpose (the girlfriends’ opinion of Peter) and the wrong people (the girlfriends). If Peter or Zooey had asked the two key questions, they would have seen their mistake right away. In fact, they would have answered the questions in the same way. What Matters Most? Their relation. Who is more important? His fiancee. If they had asked themselves the question of purpose and the question of the person, instead of unconsciously taking action to satisfy Zooey’s girlfriends, they could refocus their attention on their own relationship and the upcoming marriage.
These two key questions will help you check whether the right purpose and people are usefully propelling you toward your desired goal, or whether the wrong purpose and people are diverting you toward irrelevant and unproductive ends.
3. The billboard method
In the movie, before Peter understands why the Bro-Date strategy doesn’t work, he happens to meet Sydney (played by Jason Segel), with whom a genuine friendship connection is possible.
While still in Bro-Date mode unaware of the problems it creates, Peter nearly undermines his promising connection to Sydney.
Through self-imposed pressure to sound calm rather than comfortable with himself, Peter leaves Sydney a painfully awkward and choppy voicemail that concludes, “Okay, call me when you have a month … wait … wait … okay, I’ll talk to you … when we talk … again. Bye now. ” Peter hangs up the phone and curses himself.
Still not understanding, Peter makes a failed attempt to give Sydney a nickname, “Jo-ban”. When Sydney asks, Peter admits that the name has no meaning. It is rather a shattered combination of syllables spontaneously discharged from his urge to look like a man.
Trying to be what his fiancee’s girlfriends want doesn’t work out for Peter, but luckily Sydney, the true hero of the film rather than the male or female lead, sees through Peter’s invention and saves the friendship.
In fact, it does even more. He revives Peter’s business and strengthens it in the eyes of Zooey and his friends as well. How? Use a better strategy to focus on others. Invent the Billboard method.
Instead of imposing her own priorities like Zooey’s girlfriends did, Sydney takes the time to understand Peter’s priorities. She learned of Peter’s struggles as a real estate agent and his urgent need to sell more properties. Sydney then came up with a strategy to help. Knowing that Peter lacked the ability to promote himself effectively, Sydney posted fun and eye-catching promotional images in Los Angeles with Peter in multiple forms on billboards, buses, and buildings. For example, a billboard featured Peter in a real estate James Bond tux with a slogan “Licensed to Sell.”
4.Application: Choose Billboards instead of Bro-Fetes
Are you inadvertently wasting your time, being subtly influenced by ill-conceived “Bro-Dates” for stakeholders whose perceptions should matter less to you?
Or instead, are you investing wisely in thoughtful, win-win actions by putting up “billboards” for the stakeholders you really care about?
Action tools:
First: break the Bro-Date cycle by asking the question of purpose and the question of the person: What is most important? and Who Matters More? Let others clarify your motivation, they don’t believe it.
Second: put up “billboards” for your trusted business colleagues. Find out what they are trying to do, achieve, or achieve, and come up with creative ways for others to see them better. Do everything you can to help them look good. Give a recommendation, make an inspiring introduction, write a reference letter or give them a testimonial that they can use with clients or on social media services where their colleagues, managers or clients will see. Whichever “billboard” helps them the most, whoever puts them up.