Who Are You, Really? by Brian R. Little

Author:Brian R. Little
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster/ TED

Close-Up: Projects with Others

Consider your own personal projects right now. Are they mainly solitary pursuits? Are they primarily pursued with an intimate partner? Are they shared with scores of loving friends whom you can’t see enough of? Clearly your stable personality traits will determine which of these ways of doing your projects is most congenial. But for those of us who are not recluses or hermits or monks of a certain order, other people figure importantly in our daily pursuits. How does this play out?

Those whose personal projects are carried out exclusively with one other person are potentially vulnerable. We have studied these close-up aspects of project pursuit by looking at how many other people are involved in a person’s projects. One of the important issues here is whether you have a diversity of individuals with whom you share your projects, or whether they are instead all focused on only one person. You can look at your own projects in this way. For each of your projects list the names of others who are involved in it.33

My research team and I have found considerable variation in how people respond to this question. There are some who are, or think they are, sole proprietors of their personal projects. They list no other people as being involved. Others list a diversity of individuals typically spread across different categories of projects, such as professional, recreational, or domestic pursuits. But there are some for whom all projects are carried out with the same person. That’s risky. If everything you do is with Chris, then what would happen to your project system if Chris, for whatever reason, were to disappear? Just as removal of a core project can be massively disruptive to the structure of a person’s life, so would the absence of the one person who has been with you throughout all your pursuits. The death of a loved one, the breakup of a marriage, or the treachery of a business partner is painful enough; the collapse of shared projects can amplify that pain.

We have also looked at how other people influence the success of our core personal projects. In one study, we looked at pregnancy as a personal project and how it unfolded throughout the months preceding and including delivery. We examined how successful the birthing experience was, not just in terms of the mother’s personal experience but also in terms of medical appraisal of the child’s physical wellness (Apgar scores). The best single predictor of both measures was the emotional support of the mother’s partner. A second study examined the factors leading to success among entrepreneurs in the start-up year of their projects. Once again we measured both subjective feelings of success and more objective indicators like financial success. We found that the best predictor of both kinds of success was the emotional support of the entrepreneur’s partner. We often hear entrepreneurs talk about one of their precious upstarts as “their baby.” It is a metaphor, of course, but we can acknowledge the emotional equivalence readily.

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