the Amundsen factor #3

As the great mountain explorer Bill Tilman often remarked, the quantity and quality of food on an expedition is supremely important. Indeed it can make or break morale.

Amundsen knew this, which was why he was the expedition cook. Amundsen also simplified rations down to only four ingredients – pemmican, biscuit, milk powder and chocolate. No coffee or tea which he regarded as ‘dangerous stimulants’ on an expedition. To coffee addicted Norweigians this is harsh indeed, yet my own experience of too much coffee on a trip that involves long sustained work, is that you over exert at the beginning and crash later on- and on any trip involving the possibility of frostbite when you drop your vigilance, you cannot risk that. An interesting example of Amundsen’s attention to detail.

Having four ingredients in a ration pack simplifies things amazingly. Chocolate plus milk makes a drink. Biscuit plus chocolate makes desert. Biscuit plus pemmican makes dinner. Pemmican plus milk plus biscuit makes a slightly different dinner. Monotonous- maybe- but with added fresh(ish) seal meat it was perfectly adequate. Scott did not capitalise on the fresh seal meat possibilities- as a result all his team were suffering the onset of scurvy by the end.

If you know what is in each pack you don’t have to open it to find out. Very important in sub-zero temperatures when you have mitts on. There is also less chance of waste with opened and discarded packs being pilfered from.

After quantity and quality of food is regularity. On a good expedition you eat at the same time every day. There is nothing more hateful than sitting around for an hour at the end of a hard day waiting for the bloody cook.

When Amundsen packed the food he insisted it be done with great care. Milk was poured into little bags which were inserted between the other ingredients to fill in the gaps. The ration pack containers themselves were made wood painted black. These could then be used to make marker poles which stood out against the snow. A line of such poles either side of a supply cairn enabled its easy discovery during poor conditions.

The cook has the chance to build morale or depress it with his cooking. With his instinct for making every element of the expedition work optimally, Amundsen certainly understood the key role of the cook. One can generalise from this and see what role, in any project or operation, touches everyone on each day in a significant manner. It could be quite lowly- a secretary or receptionist – yet their effect could quite outweigh their apparent ‘insignificance’.

the Amundsen factor #2

Though Amundsen had won his race to the South Pole almost before Scott had begun (he was 200 nautical miles ahead of Scott when the latter started) he made mistakes, some of them just as ‘foolish’ as Scott’s.

I use inverted commas because anyone engaged in pioneering a new route will make mistakes. When an historian who has never made a long journey in unknown terrain criticises the efforts of these early explorers, you can either be amused or annoyed- either way it seems hindsight is always 20:20. Roland Huntford- whose biographies of Shackleton, Scott and Amundsen are always brilliantly informative and excellently written- suffers from the desire to point out and jeer every time Scott puts a foot wrong. He appears to find everything British laughable and everything Norwegian admirable. He puts Amundsen and his co-explorer Bjaaland on a pedestal and he despises Scott. 

There is a photograph in Huntford’s ‘Race for the South Pole’ of Scott and Amundsen. One in furs and the other in a cloth coat. Tacitly the book is supporting the recurrent myth that the British, in their Burberry cloth jackets, were wearing the wrong clothes for a march on the pole. Yet Amundsen wore clothes made from exactly the same cloth as the British! It is true Amundsen started out wearing furs, which were useful when they were ski-jorring (being pulled along on skiis while attached or holding onto the sledge) because the lack of body movement made them colder. But once they had to actively ski, furs were too warm and too heavy to just carry. Once Amundsen and his team encountered the barrier and were ascending to the polar plateau they ditched their reindeer furs. At the pole Amundsen wore a ventile cloth anorak cut to allow lots of movement. He only kept a fur hood which he had cut off his reindeer coat.

My kids came home from school and told me Amundsen beat Scott because he had dogs. It isn’t that simple. It was initially settled by Mear and Swann in 1986 and many subsequent expeditions (indeed all current expeditions as dogs are banned in Antarctica- crazy I know) that manhauling is a perfectly acceptable form of polar transport. If Scott had only manhauled, things might have been different. But he used dogs, ponies and motor tractors as well. All this made for exceptional planning problems. Add in the fact that his polar party- for reasons of service etiquette included the unfit Oates- was enlarged at the last minute from four to five- which made all the prepacked rations the wrong quantity. When the supply teams returned they over consumed from already-opened ration packs and most importantly already-opened paraffin cans.

If there is a single biggest failure in Scott’s expedition it was probably the fact that his fuel supplies were too low to start with and were further reduced massively by paraffin ‘creep’. At very low temperatures paraffin becomes a strange semi-solid that can creep up the inside of a can and out of a poorly secured bung. Lead soldered seams can also open at low temperatures. Amundsen had his cans silver soldered and once opened, Bjaaland soldered a tap on a can so that the precious liquid wouldn’t creep out. Scott was eating semi -frozen rations by the end and sitting in freezing tent because he had not enough fuel. It was not the food he needed at one ton depot but the fuel. Amundsen, with his experience of five years in the arctic knew that fuel supplies were hugely important- for warmth, cooking and for melting snow to avoid dehydration. He took ten times the weight of supplies that Scott did.

It is interesting to look at the expedition structures and how responsive each man was to information and advice from below. Both Scott and Amundsen were desperate to not leave the Antarctic empty-handed. Here we see the germ of ‘overloading’ the mission ie. losing focus. In Scott’s case this meant proposing his 13 day side journey to the western hills and glaciers. Amundsen proposed a similar pre-pole journey to King Edward VII land only to be dissuaded of it by the other expedition members. Because his position was less authoritarian than Scott’s, he backed down. There was some give and take in how things were decided. Scott, as naval officer, simply drafted orders from his desk in the Discovery Hut and expected them to be followed. Evans pointed out that they would better off going 150 miles in the direction of the pole than poking around in the wrong direction- whatever the geological benefits. Scott overruled him.

One can easily get caught up in Scott v. Amundsen as it’s so fascinating. However I am just as interested in what we can learn about the ‘Amundsen factor’. How, while still making errors, Amundsen was never floored in the way Scott was.

Amundsen’s major ‘error’ was to leave too early for the pole when it was still very cold. He was mislead, to some extent, by Scott and Shackleton’s previous temperature readings from the warmer McMurdo sound. But the major cause was over eagerness to move.

His error in starting out too soon when the weather was too cold became apparent very quickly. After five days they turned tail and returned to the hut- some of the men with frost nipped heels. Yet this failure was turned to his advantage in many ways. First it precipitated a bitter argument between Amundsen and Johansen, who was the more experienced polar explorer but resented Amundsen’s leadership. The mutinous comments made by an irate Johansen gave Amundsen the right to remove this troublesome explorer from the polar team. He had already been worried about Johansen’s instability but had lacked a hard reason to exclude him. But it had to be done- emotional ructions use up far too much energy to be countenanced on a serious expedition. A second benefit of the early start was that the ski-boots were revealed as over tight- these were taken apart and restitched to make them more comfortable. Given that tight boots are the single easiest way to get frostbitten feet this was no small advantage.

Perhaps the Amundsen factor is best revealed in the way Amundsen takes ‘bad luck’ and turns it around. Scott constantly bemoans his misfortune in his diaries. If there is a storm Amundsen is philosophical but Scott is depressed. So much so one is tempted to suggest- “What did you expect? It’s the south pole!”

To believe that luck is needed in any enterprise is the wrong footing to start out on. Of course you are probably going to need a ton of luck along the way, but you need to be able to visualise success without it. This Amundsen did, with massive quantities of supplies and meticulous planning for every eventuality. Scott bemoaned his luck because he relied on it. When his luck ran out he lacked the inner perspective to turn things around.

the Amundsen factor

"I may say that this is the greatest factor -- the way in which the expedition is equipped -- the way in which every difficulty is foreseen, and precautions taken for meeting or avoiding it. Victory awaits him who has everything in order -- luck, people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck."          

Roald Amundsen

The equipping of an expedition is paramount, and, just as important is the mastery of the correct use of that equipment. I suggest that equipment fetishism, though, which is common among successful explorers, serves also as a very important tool for refining the visualization of a successful expedition. The successful explorer visualizes every eventuality before making his journey. He prepares for every eventuality and is ready when something untoward happens.

But this visualization is only possible when there is a single, clear and unloaded objective.

Humans, typically, load objectives. You’re going shopping- why not drop into the library too, and while you’re at it post a letter and see what is on at the local art centre. That’s called being efficient, and, in ordinary circumstances, it is efficient.

The householder who leaves his house to buy one item and then returns, only to leave a few hours later to buy another is mocked for his or her inefficiency.

But that is precisely the skill needed for successful exploration. The natural ability and desire to unload an objective.

Loading objectives is at the heart of good business practice. While you are waiting for X, do Y. Multitasking is a skill all housewives and all chefs need.

Not explorers.

Unloading an objective may have to be learned if it isn’t natural. Everyone will push you to have multiple objectives for your journey: scientific, charitable, geographical. You must resist this by resolutely unloading each sub-objective until your basic goal is revealed.

When you load an objective you divert energy and resources elsewhere. The essence of an expedition is that 100% of all resources are needed for the main objective. There is never any slack. This is true of any first time journey, and trebly true if no human has made this journey before.

Without the feeling of 100% commitment to the objective the will wavers, excuses appear and multiply. Look at any failed expedition and you will observe a loaded objective leading to a chain of small accidents culminating in either disaster or giving up.

All big accidents start with an unexceptional chain of small accidents. That these can accumulate is due to attention being elsewhere, diverted. Elsewhere because the main objective is being relegated while a secondary objective is being pursued.

Nothing is ever conquered on the fly. You make a simple plan with a single objective. You then visualize all the stages necessary to achieve this objective. You run a mental what-if for each problem you think up. You use equipment for each stage as a way of making the visualization real. Working on preparing equipment- as Amundsen’s men did with their boots and sledges not only builds familiarity, it also builds a strong mental image of the planned journey and its eventual success.

mastery

What is mastery? How do you master a subject? How do you know when you are a master of something?

Mastery is one of the most satisfying things. Aiming for it is enough. Being a ‘master’ is a snare and a delusion- even if you are one. Better to be on the path to mastery.

The aim of mastery is simple- to get better and better at what you do- be it making meatballs or shooting a bow and arrow to sailing a boat to writing. Mastery in one area gives clues that can be used to mastering another area more quickly, but be warned, real mastery takes at least ten years of continuous, though not excessive, effort.

Are there any shortcuts to mastery? Yes, but if you are interested in them they won’t work. Mostly thinking about shortcuts is a waste of time? Why? Because to achieve mastery you need to be in it for the long haul. To be in it for the long haul you had better enjoy it. Short cuts are never ever enjoyable. If they were, everyone would use them and they wouldn’t be a shortcut. An example is an intensive course in something. It’ll work, but the pressure will take the fun out of it. Very often people who take intensive courses give up soon after.

Mastery is not to be taken lightly. A master craftsman is a joy to behold. He adds something to the quality of all the lives he touches. The hard part of many modern jobs is that there is no clear path to mastery, nor even much benefit to it. Being a master business executive sounds weird because it is. The whole reason to be an executive is to get on the promotion ladder to the top slot in the corporation. This is not mastery in the usual sense, more an exercise in cunning and judicious brown nosing.

Mastery is not a position, a job, a title- it is simple being very good at a demonstrable skill. The general principles of mastery are few but here they are.

Human ‘virtues’ such as patience, singlemindedness, ability to control negative emotions, all these are an aid to mastery. Concentration and avoidance of distraction are another great help. The modern world revolves around increasing distraction opportunities. If you seek mastery you must actively avoid the crap distractions on offer. And even the good ones.

You must centre your life around your mastery subject. Let’s say it is making models of the titanic out of matchsticks. Then you must chose a job which gives you enough free time to be able to spend the best of your energy on model making. Jobs that require body and soul commitment (ie.make you worried) are no good. They are a distraction from achieving mastery.

The plateau is the usual place to find oneself when attempting mastery. Improvements, fast or slow, are quickly taken for granted. Only when you compare yourself to how you were at the beginning do you realise how far you have come, and how far you have to go. Most of the time, then, you are trying to get better but are not significantly improving. To continue without some external sign of progress is the hardest thing. That’s why you need to take it a little easy and enjoy what you are doing. The Japanese have the right approach in their martial arts. They practice everyday but they do it in such a way that it is just another day. Movement from the plateau is most often effected by association with someone inspiring, or a new source of interest. This produces a new perspective. It gives to what you already know a new order. Progress, beyond a certain point, is about reorganising what you already know, re-ordering it, discovering what really is important and what isn’t.

Mastery is its own reward. That’s why it’s such a good thing to aim for. You know when you are improving- who cares what others think?

two types of creativity

Type 1: trying to solve a specific problem. You need to get a heavy canoe down a cliff. You need to design a boat that can be packed into a rucksack. You need to extricate a stuck vehicle from deep sand.

In these type of problems we know our desired outcome very well. We can visualise the ENDPOINT but not the startpoint. For this type of problem brainstorming is useless. What you need is spiral thinking (see the entry by that name) plus, sleeping on it. By spiralling the situation you are simply circling the thing, checking everything out, seeing what is there, observing and not deciding anything. You may come in closer and closer, zooming in as you see what is needed but nothing is forced. You are loading the brain with all it needs to solve the problem. You wake in the morning and hey presto it is solved.

Type 2: This is the open ended type of problem typified by coming up with a GREAT advertising slogan or campaign. Brainstorming was designed for this and works admirably. How many uses can you think for a brick? Brainstorm it and you’ll think of hundreds. There is no fixed ENDPOINT apart from coming up with a GREAT idea. So you need to just chuck as much mud at the wall as you can. You can use this to come up with characters and plot situations too. 

be a swarm worker

Kevin Kelly and other illuminati have written fascinating stuff about the power of the swarm to solve problems- such as cement distribution in Mexico- and there are even sites on the net that offer to solve problems by having lots of people take part as a ‘swarm’. Which is kind of like mass brainstorming.

What I have in mind is a little different: internalising the swarm, using it as a suggestive visual, even tactile, metaphor to generate and deploy hundreds of attempts, approaches and, by using the natural advantages of the swarm, do work better or solve a problem without getting stuck.

There are multiple approaches to work. Either they fall into the organised or disorganised category. Organised means some method is being used to attack a piece of work and disorganised means no method, or, more usually, a series of half-arsed attempts using different methods, is used.

The problem with disorganised work is that you lose confidence quickly. You lose momentum and you lose your way. Watch kids work- they often give up simply because they are disorganised.

Organised attempts at work usually feature some form of sequencing. You buy a wardrobe kit from Ikea. You follow the sequenced instructions in the manual. You sit back with a glass of wine and admire your finished wardrobe. (Or should I say swedished.) Now there are actually hundreds of different ways to build that wardrobe but one of the few good ways is set down as gospel in the manual. Which is all well and good where there is an instruction manual but what if there isn’t?

The problem of sequenced approaches is that they encourage the ‘one gospel’ mindset. You look for an instruction manual that cannot possibly exist. You get all hung up looking for that ‘one solution’. But there seem to be so many options. You usually end up paralysed by choice at some level or another. This plethora of choice, instead of appearing where it should- as hundreds of equally acceptable solutions- appears as hundreds of equally acceptable places to start. But you are scared because you IMAGINE there is only one ‘correct’ route. One ‘correct’ solution. And you are scared of wasting effort so you kind of scout ahead- but sometimes you can’t look that far ahead. So you waste time thinking you can predict the world.

Sequential thinking encourages us to think the world is like one of those maze puzzles. Lots of places to start, lots of false turns possible- only one correct route.

But imagine a maze where almost every route ‘was correct’- as long as you keep going and learn from your mistakes?

What if it isn’t the ‘correctness of the route’ that matters but simply your approach to the maze?

When descending a river you can get all confused thinking ‘there’s only one right way to get down here.’ Nonsense, you’re confused because they are many ways- if you survive then you found one of the many right ways. As the old proverb has it “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

Sequential working by definition, corrals us into assuming there is only one solution possible. So we go crazy looking for it. We get mired in the hideous trap of perfectionism. We get screwed up trying to predict what will happen. I love looking at business plans that predict profits in two years time…

Sequential working can also destroy momentum, and in many tasks 'keeping going' is more important than any particular way you work.

Swarm working is a way out.

It’s a way to be organised- ie. you have more up your sleeve than ‘just starting’. Kids have this which is why they are so brilliant at breaking down inhibitions about getting moving. The downside is they have no other tools in the bag. Come snack time and a whole new project beckons.

Swarm working is an organised method of attacking work without the downside of sequential working.

Remember, sequential working works when there is an instruction manual. So use one if there is one. But when you are stuck without one you need something different.

Swarm working utilises the best of ‘just start’ without the downside of giving up. It uses the power of feedback and optimisation- the strengths of the swarm- to generate a solution, to do the work.

It uses the power of organisation by setting parameters rather than asking ‘is this the right way?’ all the time.

And here, which may be the key to the whole thing, swarm working is MORE FUN. When traveling in the desert I watched Bedouin change a burst tyre. Three of them worked on it together. In the West that would have been one guy on his lonesome- the others (if there were any) doing other 'important tasks'. Or, it would have been three guys arguing about the right way to change a tyre ie. an argument about sequence. But the Bedouin just got stuck in and had quite a laugh fixing that tyre.

Swarm working can be more fun because, literally, more people are involved, making the swarm bigger, more like a party. But only if they are not intent on turning it into a sequence. The key thing, whether there is one or many 'swarming it', is you don't bogged down and lose momentum. This way you are more likely to enter a 'flow state' of working. Plodding away like a robot does damage to the natural flair all humans have.

Here’s a simple example. You have mixed black and white pebbles on a tray. You need to pick up all the blacks and put them in one pot and all the whites in another. Sequential working suggests an obvious order: zoom in on a specific colour, pick it out and drop it in the pot. Momentum is broken each time. What's more, it's boring.

Swarm working is more light hearted. You very roughly sort most of the blacks and most of the whites by kind of sweeping them apart. You then pour them off, en masse, into their respective pots. The few that enter the wrong area are tidied up last.

You set basic parameters- such as ‘mainly black stones’ or ‘mainly white stones’ and then tidy up later.

If you set an exact ‘only black stones’ procedure you take far longer, have a dull time, and possibly lose momentum and give up.

OK- take swarm writing. Instead of assuming an article or book has one and one only ‘correct solution’ I just get started. Without parameters this would be disorganised working and I’ve done enough of that.

So I set parameters. Say it’s an article about mountain biking in Russia. I think of an organising parameter such as ‘mountain biking in Russia is the most varied in the world’. Then I swarm it. Have fun.

I go hell for leather, keeping an eye on my parameter when I get stuck, and when it seems like I have finished I tidy up. This isn’t like the ‘editing’ you have to impose on disorganised writing, where you have to pluck some semblance of a skeleton from what looks like the remains of a jellyfish suicide pact, instead it's just a simple trimming down of things that got swept up into the article by accident.

If it’s a book then I’ll set a few parameters. Say, just for the hell of it, that I want to write a novel about mountain biking in Russia. One major parameter will be point of view- from whose angle is the story told. Another will be ‘the main thing’- perhaps a love story involving the mountain biker and a Georgian BMX champion. Finally I might have the parameter of it being funny or serious.

With my parameters I then go all out not worrying too much about what I am setting down. 

I have to say I haven’t always worked like this. I once spent a long summer not getting a boat into the water. It was a wooden boat and I went about repairing it in a highly sequential way. I spent a lot of time working out what order to do things in so I wouldn’t repeat myself. By the end it had a working engine (kind of silly as it was a sail boat) but still leaked so much it wouldn’t float. If I did it again I’d swarm it. First set the parameters: ‘get the boat working by this date’, ‘make sure it floats first and sails second’. Then I’d attack everything that helped floating and sailing without worrying too much about anything except putting the hours in.

Likewise in writing, for years I was over organised and did nothing, paralysed into making intricate plans of action, character studies and lists of things happening. Then I went to the other extreme- disorganised- just starting and hoping for the best and then spending months picking through the jellyfish remains looking for a backbone.

Now I swarm everything I do if it is a new task or one for which there is no ‘instruction manual’ (which is most things bar recipes and model plane kits).

Even fairly trivial things can benefit from swarming. Take packing up my house to move. When I was deeply sequential this seemed a big headache. The more I visualised what needed to be done the more confused I became about what order I should do it in. The amount of work was stupendous. Then, recently, when I had a new chance to move I used swarm working. I set the parameters: ‘everything out by this date’, ‘move the big heavy things first’. Then I just swarmed the task- going day and night until it was done.

Swarm working implies optimizing all the time from feedback. One of the characteristics of the swarm is that it is highly connected and information is freely shared. When something doesn’t work the swarm absorbs that information and tries something different. In swarm working all your different attempts, suggestions, ideas, actions form the swarm. In sequential working you are very attached to any one idea and this attachment causes you to hang onto bad ideas way too long (the only thing you need to hang on to are your parameters). So your activity mimics the swarm by being continuous, not losing momentum, fluid, inventive. If blocked you try something else.

The organized part of swarm working is setting the parameters. These can be as wide or as narrow as you like, but you need to stick to them. Then you are free to try anything that occurs.

Think of that maze- it's not against you- it's on your side- all you need to do is keep up the enthusiasm and the momentum- and swarm your way to victory. It's a lot more fun.

money and meaning and being on a mission

Thinker and writer Christopher Ross, author of the brilliant Tunnel Visions, once said to me that if he had to live on social security in the UK he would become intensely involved in something like bridge- a game that provides social contact, excitement, a chance to progress and even make money- all by simply turning up at a bridge club. In other words: meaning. Bridge becomes your mission. And being on a mission loads meaning into your life. Look at the situation- you have to live on a bare subsistence amount of money so if you use it for anything except food and a few necessities you’ll be in trouble. So the meaning for your life must come for free. Hence joining some activity where you can get fully immersed, in a flow state, use most of your intelligence and feel fully tested.

Can you have a mission to make money? I am not so sure. If your mission is to raise money for a certain purpose, then that purpose is your real mission, not the money. And you may find a way of doing it without money. When I was on an expedition to cross Canada by canoe kind people helped me with free labour, saving me thousands of dollars. I found it far easier to get excited about an expedition- and excite others- than about making money for an expedition and paying others. It’s almost always better to cut to the chase, and go for what you want, rather than aiming for the money to get what you want.

Money is meaningless, in itself. Out in the wilderness a ten dollar note is more use to light a fire than anything else. I've even, in dire straits and with no loo paper, wiped my arse on money: literally. Money acquires what meaning it has by its ability to excite us with the things it can buy. The things we can consume. 

The need for money also motivates us to do things. Such activities can often be interesting and meaningful in their own right. Having to earn a living has got me travelling to Arizona to ride with a sheriff's posse and to Haiti in search of zombies. I would never have done such interesting stuff if I hadn't been paid by a magazine to do it.

Production not consumption

To try and derive meaning from the way you make money is one thing. To assume, then, that having money will provide meaning is a false step. To assume that money, or enough of it provides enough meaning for living, is a house of sand.

It’s easy to see how you can fall into this trap: I have on many occasions. Money gets you the things you want. You want those things- be they cars, kid’s schooling or foreign trips because you think having them will make you happy. You might even think it is your duty to get these things. These things, you reason, give meaning to your life. Therefore, if money is how you get them, having the money itself will provide meaning.

But not much meaning in life is derived from pure consumption; far more concentrated rations are derived from production- in the broadest possible sense. Why do so many people yearn to be artists, writers and film makers? Partly it is the attention such people get, but partly it is the instinctive desire to be involved in creating things, production, not consumption. More meaning.

Other sources of hi-level meaning: being useful, helping others, and choosing how you react to illness, bad luck, inequity, death.

Meaning is our fuel, consumption is what we do the rest of the time. The more consumption the more meaning you need in your life to balance it.

Being on a mission- whether to help others or play bridge all the time provides a very useful form of meaning. Practically a balanced diet of the stuff. Why? Because you downgrade your consumption needs. You no longer care what others think of you because you have your mission. You no longer need a fancy house and nice clothes because you have work to do.

Of course this way madness lies a few steps nearer. You could become so obsessed you lose the ability to make real contact with other humans. Only so long as the mission serves this ability, rather than usurps it, will you actually benefit. Who hasn’t met a religious nut out to convert everyone he meets? His boring repetitive speech only serving to turn people off, obscuring, even, any real value he might have.

Climb your Everest

In 1924 Maurice Wilson gave himself a mission: fly to Tibet, crash land on the upper slopes of Mount Everest and climb to the summit. His reason was to spread the good news about the power of prayer and fasting. One problem: he knew nothing about climbing or flying. By 1933 he had learnt, kind of. He bought a second hand Gypsy Moth plane and after lots of setbacks managed to fly to India. In 1934 he headed off for Everest. He used equipment left behind by other expeditions to get himself up the mountain’s North East side-though he was so ignorant of climbing (his sole training had been to wander around some low British hills for a mere five weeks) he threw away some crampons rather than use them as a climbing aid. Instead he laboriously cut steps and finally exhausted himself. After 18 days rest at a lower altitude he tried again- but died at 22,700 feet. An optimist to the end, his last diary entry was: “Off again, gorgeous day.”

A mission, self-given, raises the octane level of your existence. Instead of pinking along on 80 octane tractor fuel you’re purring along on 99 grade Avgas, head clear as a bell going fast and straight all the way. A man on a mission.

You may well know the type, often religiously inspired, they have a different energy. They do not necessarily have a ‘strong’ or domineering personality. Maybe they are quiet. But you notice them soon enough. They appear to move in a straight line to what they want to do. No sitting around. Get it done. Man (or woman) on a mission.

Now, it is very important to state right here, that there is no requirement to be on a mission. There is nothing written that says every man woman and child must have a mission. But it does help get you through the day. It does give you something to get out of bed for each morning.

You can’t just ‘think up’ a mission for yourself. You try. You lie in bed thinking “my mission is to break the world land speed record on a wind powered skateboard”. Then you roll over and think “what is the point of that?” Nope, missions come from somewhere other than your febrile imagination.

In a sense the mission must be you. You are the mission. When you know who you are you’ll know your mission.

The power of the mission comes from focussing outwards. It means doing things without expectation of a direct reward. It means helping the community just because that is the thing to do. The desire to be of assistance to humanity and not just a parasite starts the mission seeking program.

But there are many dangers along the way. Off the shelf missions are two a penny. Work for that cause. Do that service job. Volunteer for this. Give your ear to that. Now all this is socially very acceptable and a good way to get out of the house but it ‘aint no mission. The mission is like turning on the supercharger, the afterburner, the final stage of the rocket blasting goodness knows where…

Mission control is the murky lair where all missions are conceived. Mission control is accessible to all, once you’ve found your own way in. The door to mission control is very clever though- you have to recognise your ‘mission self’ from hundreds of other images displayed on the door panel. Naturally you keep pressing the most attractive images first. The ones that make you like a bit like Brad Pitt what with the light and everything. No go. You get frustrated, hitting all those pictures of yourself leaving, of course, the rather ugly and ordinary snapshots till now. But then you try these. Deep down you think- this is me. That horrid lurking pessimist is allowed some air time – yep- that’s you alright. Out of a kind of reversal, a false sense of seeking truth, you hit the ugliest mugs, the worst shots of all. Still no go. Finally only one area has not been tried. The pictures of you that are neither flattering nor shattering, they are simply so close to home you’ve disregarded them until now. Just as you drive a familiar route on autopilot having a conversation, taking turns and indicating without thought, so, too, these familiar images of you are so familiar you do not even really see them. But after trying all the others you’re forced to conclude- well, that might be me, after all.

Set yourself on fire

The Mission is the form or format that sets your vague urge ON FIRE. I wanted vaguely to learn martial arts. I had tried a few times and given up. I wasn’t that talented at it but I really wanted to get better. I realised that only by total full time commitment would I improve. Then I heard about this course that involved training with the Tokyo Riot Police. Now I had a mission. Something more that just me endlessly training alone. I was part of something bigger.

Your mission sets you on fire. It’s fuelled by the higher octane fuel you now are running on. But you are also moving a step or two closer to madness.

Was Maurice Wilson a nut? He sacrificed his life and did not even get to the top of Everest. But in 1934- no one had. And no one climbed it solo until 1980- achieved by the very experienced climber Reinhold Messner. So actually Wilson’s attempt, carried out while fasting, is actually very impressive in its own nutty way. But is this the template, the core reality, of all missions? A kind of superhuman strength derived from being slightly unhinged?

During WW2 SOE trained many agents and sabotage teams to be dropped behind enemy lines. At first they selected leaders by seeing ‘who emerged’ in exercises where no leader had been designated. But they realised they were missing a lot of good people. So they built in exercises where someone would be made leader just as a try out. And they found a full 50% of good leaders for this difficult and dangerous work, it transpired, need to be given the mission. They won’t give it to themselves.

Back to mission control. Some people, about half of the fortunate few we may guess, can give themselves missions. Maybe these are the ‘natural entrepeneurs, leaders, creators’. But the other 50%, just as talented, have to be given a mission. So they wait, and wait, and wait. They get bored waiting so they get a job, where they skull along knowing if only they were given a real mission they’d be on fire. Awaken the lion within O brother!

The whole conceit is to give yourself a mission without it feeling like you are giving yourself a mission. The reason is that a sane human being wants to fit in. Only insane people want to push themselves ahead of all others, only the immature want to shout: me,me,me all the time. And nice as attention is, you only need so much.

To give yourself a mission that isn’t a mission you have to find something outside yourself that’s bigger than you, that you respect, that the people you respect respect, that has growth potential, that isn’t futile, but most of all engages ‘the real you’, that is, the ‘you’ that is ‘your best self’, the one with talent working at full stretch. I love boulder climbing, but I’m not that good. More to the point I don’t want to put in the hours to become any better. Now and again is good enough. It would be silly to make a mission revolve around boulder climbing since it’s only a marginal ‘self’.

Take the English writer Tom Hodgkinson- creator of the Idler magazine- he gave himself the mission to spread the good news of doing less and enjoying life more. He’s written books about being free and he’s just started an academy to put the interest back into learning subjects long reviled in ignorant circles such as Latin. Actually he seems to be working darn hard at it…

His mission started with a something he obviously was in tune with- rejecting the conventional work ethic and replacing it with a less robotic approach to life. The mission is him, he’s the mission.

Albert Schweitzer gave himself the mission to start a leprosy hospital deep in the jungle. He wasn’t a good doctor. He wasn’t a doctor at all. He was a world class musician. Which he gave up to learn medicine and head out, aged 40+ to start his mission in the African jungle. So here someone gives up what seems to be ‘them’, to start something late in life to fulfil their mission. Being a musician, however brilliant, isn’t ‘a mission’ unless you are trying to achieve something outside yourself. Lots of missions involve trying to ‘change the world’, hopefully for the better, but in a sort of warrior frame of mind rather than assistant tea boy frame of mind. Being a warrior for some cause or other is the template of the mission.

So, to recap, you need to find these activities that your best self partakes in. You need to then find a warrior style activity that can be welded to your interest or skill. Typically that will involve building some project that does some good or confers some benefit to the world.

How do you tell the difference between taking the easiest possible route through life and actually being aligned with some task, so you are not lazy but simply unwasteful in doing it? I think you can tell if what seems easy to you seems hard to others then you obviously have some kind of talent, even better if you enjoy it, even better if it seems meaningful. It’s all about lining up these ducks to get the right result.

I’ll say it again, though- I am not even sure everyone needs to have a mission. It’s too close to madness for some. Look at poor old Maurice Wilson on Everest- so powered up and yet so ignorant at the same time.

Solo missions are obviously less dangerous than the kind that involve crowds. The kind of crowds that want to invade countries and incinerate the oppostion. But most missions do involve some element of ‘raising consciousness’ , of spreading the word, of gaining converts.

I think you can apply a little test- if you want ‘the whole world’ to follow your plan- then you’re heading in an odd direction. But if your mission is to address an imbalance in the world. That you are there to try and nudge things back on course a bit, then you’re probably OK.

Give me the money anyday

Despite all this stirring talk of missions you still need to earn a living. If you work full time at a job you like, to earn enough just to live, then that is tolerable. If you have to work full time at a job you dislike just to live then you are doing something wrong. Explorer John Harrison for years worked six month on six months off- going on expeditions using the money he had saved. In the middle east it is said that a carpet maker should be able to live for three months on the money he makes from a carpet that takes three weeks to weave. In order to achieve that kind of leverage you need to either lower your costs or get involved in something more highly remunerative.

This logic leads people into working for banks and announcing they will retire at 35, and indeed I have an old college buddy who did just that. But most people don’t want to work for even one year yet alone fifteen at a job they consider mercenary and boring. I mean, they rightly reason, I may not even get to thirty five. I might be dead tomorrow. So they look for activities with more meaning. More sense of mission.

The problem is, if you are not fully stretched and involved in something pretty compulsive- such as bridge, martial arts, climbing, competitive fishing or ornithology- then you will feel the censure of society for being without cash, driving a crap car, not having enough money to send the kiddies on school trips. Only if your life is pumped FULL of meaning will you be able to bear the brunt of society thinking and expressing its view that you are a loser.

Entrepreneur Matthew Leeming once told me that “Entrepreneurs drive tiny little cars until they make it huge and then they get a Roller.” In other words, when they are on a mission to make money they couldn’t give a monkeys for what society thinks of them. Then, when they have succeeded, they like to show off a bit. Contrast this with the drug dealer- anxious to have his flash beamer even when he’s living in a council flat. Since the drug dealer isn’t on a mission he CARES what society thinks of him.

Being on a mission is like having concentrated space rations of meaning. Instead of having to get dribs and drabs of meaning from all your daily interactions you get it in a big concentrated wallop from pursuing your mission. That’s one reason I love being on an expedition. You can hug your mission to yourself like a hot water bottle- as you pass through the lives of regular folks, you dressed in rags, they with all their fine things, you feel not a whit diminished. You have your mission. Explorer Bill Tillman used to prefer using a sailing boat to get to remote islands instead of flying because it made the expeditions longer. It extended the delicious sense of being on a mission.

Conclusion

Money can’t provide enough meaning for most of us. We need a sense of mission in what we do. Missions have dangers, but handled right they can provide higher energy fuel to what we do. Don’t think in terms of vague urges think in terms of missions- micro-missions and macro-missions. Use the excitement of being on a mission to get you going.