A Few Thoughts About Motivation

So what's your reaction to a newspaper ad like this? "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success."

Sounds tempting, no? According to legend, 5,000 Englishmen saw that ad in 1913, recognized it as a chance to be part of Ernest Shackleton's famous Antarctic expedition -- and pleaded for the chance to join. That sort of rhetoric touches something timeless in us. When we pick modern-day adventures (even if they aren't as daunting as crossing Antarctica), we want the project to be hard. We don't mind struggle and fatigue. In fact, we expect it. It means we picked the right project.

But four-year-olds don't think like that. Even 10-year-olds don't. Their motivations usually are a lot simpler. Do things that are fun. Avoid things that are scary or painful. Oh, occasionally there are some adjustments to those credos, if it involves pleasing a favorite adult or enjoying a momentary burst of daredevil thrills. Still, the basic pattern holds. Long-haul stoicism is for grownups. Kids generally live in the moment.

So early on, our efforts to get the kids to do anything ambitious involved Pavlovian-style rewards. Press the lever, get a pellet. That's almost literally what we did. If we picked a hike of more than a mile or so, the best way to get our elementary schoolers to finish was to chop up a brownie into 12 or 16 pieces . . . and distribute them slowly, one at a time, each time our kids made it another 200 yards or so. In essence, we turned the trail into one long, outdoor snack bar.

Maybe that's starting to change. When we skiied at Tahoe last winter, my 11-year-old and I ended up on a long, challenging trail that became the only way to ski home. It was at the outer limits of what he could handle, and we talked about maybe putting him on a chair lift to get him down. No way, he said. He pressed on -and was proud of skiing all the way down.

Still, I've learned the hard way that when we adults see an ultra-ambitious goal that works for us, that's no justification for trying to turn our kids into pint-sized versions of Shackleton's crew. They're still kids. They want to see at least some elements of fun in the experience.

Heck, maybe adults are the same way, too. That legendary Shackleton ad turns out to be a 1960s fabrication. It was cooked up by sloppy biographers a half-century after the real trip. Shackleton never actually ran such a notice. He did get 5,000 applicants. But they responded to a much more upbeat notice of the expedition, talking about how well-prepared everything would be and how much scientific progress the trip would bring.

My suspicion: it's only when we create our narratives -- after the fact -- that overcoming adversity becomes heroic.