After four weeks of meeting with friends, I learned that I am highly motivated by social factors. Some might say it’s bad to cave into peer pressure, but what about when the results are positive?
Lifelong Impact
With this framework in mind, I understand a majority of the choices and decisions I’ve made throughout my life. For better or worse, a lot of decisions I made were heavily influenced by the people around me.
Throughout my younger years, I followed a lot of my brothers’ footsteps. Their opinion was important to me, because they had insight into what was coming next for me. Most of my socializing was done through the two of them until may later teen years, which influenced my decisions even more.
Peer pressure is often framed as a bad thing. Drugs, alcohol, and the whole nine yards. I’ve had my fair share of these not so good decisions, but plenty of good did result from this influence. Back to my brothers, Brandon joined Boy Scouts and Cross Country, which led me to do so, and Frank played football, which led to me making my own friends when I joined in grade school. There are probably countless good decisions in my life that I’ve made without realizing it based on the influence of others.
A lack of peer pressure is why I put on 30+ pounds after graduating college. There wasn’t a reason beyond my own desire to exercise to get me out. No team goals, no championships, no races, nothing. I consistently made the excuse that I was just taking a much-needed break, but the reality was I just couldn’t find a reason to motivate me. Luckily, my first trial of biking to work has given me a reason to exercise daily.
Stakes Make Progress
It can be easy to put things off until there are consequences for doing so. In my case, those consequences don’t even need to be dire. Simply having to foot the bill for a couple other people has led all of our group to make progress more often than not – we did have one occurrence being treated to breakfast.
This approach may not work for everyone. Some will think this is a waste of time and effort. Some people really can be purely motivated by their own desires. My hat goes off to them, but I’m going to focus on what works for me.
If you’ve ever heard someone say or felt something along the lines of, “You don’t want something if you need incentives to do so,” I implore you to snuff that thinking out. Sometimes when you want something to happen, incentives are exactly what you need.
Progress Makes Perfect
I’ve made more progress in my writing than I have in several months. More importantly, I’ve made consistent progress.
With that progress made, I wanted to experiment with something else. I specifically avoided making writing my goal the past couple of weeks. I worked on the project as a whole. The work was high-level planning and thinking, but I didn’t actually write. Not having a specific writing goal caused me to not write. Even still, I still found excuses and reasons to “put it off until tomorrow.”
Forget what you know about peer pressure. This is a trial that I believe everyone should go thru at some point. You may find that it’s not for you, but I guarantee at least one person from your group will benefit greatly. Don’t wait for someone to invite you. Call up a few friends and organize a meal, coffee, or just even a gathering at your place to talk about goals.
For next time I’ll be scratching an itch that has my attention as of late. Minimalism has been on my mind a lot after I re-watched the Minimalists’ documentary, and my brother got me hooked on the director’s YouTube channel. I am going to be trying their challenge game joined this time by my brother. Tune in next time to see how the first week goes!
Trying Out Before Buying In 