When it comes to staying motivated in pursuit of your goals, it’s not about whether others influence you, but how and how much. When working with others, you need a way to check whether you are being productively or unproductively focused 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 pressure ourselves to waste time on Bro-Dates.
1. The Bro-Date Method
At the beginning of the film, Peter (played by Paul Rudd) proposes to his girlfriend Zooey (played by Rashida Jones), and she enthusiastically says yes.
When they’re together alone, things are great. But when Zooey’s girlfriends express their discomfort that Peter lacks many male friends, things change. Zooey becomes nervous, and Peter goes on a wild goose chase to recruit more male friends.
There’s nothing wrong with having more friends, but the warped urgency created by their shared concern over Zooey’s girlfriend doubts leads Peter on a series of time-wasting and awkward “Sibling Dates.”
In a ridiculous variation on the weak of online dating, Peter meets a potential friend whose online image portrays him as several decades younger. From another man who misunderstands Peter’s non-romantic intentions, Peter receives two vigorous and unwanted kisses, and then a series of embarrassing public insults.
There’s nothing wrong with Peter and Zooey listening to their friends, who offer well-intentioned information based on their own experiences and perceptions. The mistake both Peter and Zooey make is subtly substituting the girlfriends’ perspective for their own and letting it become a primary source of motivation driving their actions. The girlfriends identify a problem, but it’s their problem, not Peter and Zooey’s problem.
Peter and Zooey cut and paste the girlfriends’ opinions into their own mindsets, instead of discerning the difference between considering the information and internalizing someone else’s concerns.
That is the wrong way to be directed by others: to substitute the perspectives of others for your own. It is often more difficult 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 become disoriented.
It gets worse. Because their persuasive efforts can be so powerful, we end up striving to solve someone else’s problem, which is a product of their experiences and biases rather than our own.
However, if we look closely, there are usually clues for us to see. In the movie, for example, Zooey’s girlfriends have a lot of problems in their own relationships. It turns out that her opinions stem more from idiosyncratic emotional baggage associated with her own romantic failings 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 ours in the first place. It exists instead in the emotional domain of another person. We run in circles, unknowingly prompted by someone else’s prejudices, but for a time under the illusion that we must be making progress because of the effort we are putting forth. By the time we escape the cycle, if at all, it is often too late. By focusing on the wrong priorities for too long, we waste valuable time and energy and, like Peter and Zooey, risk damaging relationships.
2. The remedy for the Bro-Date method: two key questions
If you’re 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’s 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 one of them can break the Bro-Date cycle.
What matters most? is the question of purpose. It asks you to consider for the issue at hand, what your true number one source of motivation is.
Who matters more? is the person’s question. It asks you to consider for the issue at hand, who is your primary stakeholder, the person whose reaction is most important 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 themselves the two key questions, they would have seen their mistake immediately. In fact, they would have answered the questions in the same way. What matters most? Their relation. Who matters more? His girlfriend. If they had asked each other the question of purpose and the question of person, instead of unknowingly looking for actions to satisfy Zooey’s girlfriends, they could refocus their attention on their own relationship and their upcoming marriage.
These two key questions help you verify if the right purpose and people are pushing you toward the desired goal, or if 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 isn’t working, he accidentally meets 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 with Sydney.
Through self-imposed pressure to sound cool instead of being comfortable with himself, Peter leaves Sydney with a rambling and painfully incoherent voicemail that concludes, “Okay, call me whenever you have a mo…a moment. …wait a minute…okay, I’ll talk to you…when we talk…again. Goodbye now.” Peter hangs up his phone and clothes.
Still not getting the point, Peter makes an unsuccessful attempt to give Sydney a nickname, “Jo-ban”. When Sydney asks, Peter admits that the name has no meaning. It is rather a mutilated combination of syllables spontaneously discharged by his impulse to appear like a man’s man.
Trying to be what his fiancée’s girlfriends want doesn’t work for Peter, but luckily Sydney, the real hero of the film rather than the male or female lead, sees through Peter’s ruse and saves the friendship.
In fact, it does even more. He revives Peter’s business and makes it stronger in the eyes of Zooey and his friends as well. How? He uses a better strategy to focus on others. Invents 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 strategized to help. Knowing that Peter lacked the ability to market himself effectively, Sydney placed humorous and flashy promotional images in Los Angeles showing Peter in multiple guises on billboards, buses, and buildings. For example, one billboard featured Peter in a tuxedo like the James Bond of real estate with the slogan “Licensed to sell.”
4. Application: Choose billboards instead of quotes
Are you inadvertently wasting your time, being subtly swayed into ill-conceived “Bro-Dates” for stakeholders whose perceptions you should care less about?
Or, instead, are you investing wisely in well-thought-out win-win actions by putting up “billboards” for stakeholders you care about?
Action tools:
First: Break the Bro-Date cycle by asking the Purpose Question and the Person Question: What is most important? And who matters more? Let others clarify your motivation, not 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 to make them look better to others. Do whatever you can to help them look good. Give a reference, make an inspiring presentation, write a letter of reference, or give them a testimonial that they can use with clients or on social media services where their peers, managers, or clients will see it. Whatever “billboards” help them the most, whoever puts them up.
