The Happiness Of Pursuit Part 9

In short, it's a mess. But once you get down to a few remaining countries, your options are very clear. There aren't many ways to get to Gambia. You can fly to Dakar, Senegal, and then hop over on a ferry or commuter flight, or you can take the twice-weekly flight from London. That's it.

My love of travel hacking helped me memorize airline schedules to the point where I became an annoying party guest, asking people who were going on a trip for their full itinerary and offering unsolicited advice.

As I gained confidence, I stopped worrying about things. I rerouted trips from the middle of Madagascar. When emba.s.sies turned down my visa applications, I flew to countries anyway in hopes of making it work on the ground. (Most of the time, it did.) I was fully invested in completing the quest, and I found I was making progress more quickly than expected.

Faster, Stronger

Others in this book experienced the same phenomenon of rapid advancement. Phoebe Snetsinger, who set out to see as many bird species as possible, initially planned to take two or three foreign trips a year, seeing a few hundred birds annually. This quickly expanded once she had a few foreign trips under her belt and was hooked. "Numbers were piling up," she wrote. "My biggest total year had been the previous one, when I'd seen nearly 1,000 new species, about the maximum I could possibly absorb and hope to retain."

Robyn Devine, who is undertaking a long project to make 10,000 hand-knit hats, began with a much smaller project to knit 100 hats in a year. But just as I learned what I was truly capable of once I'd traveled to fifty countries, she discovered she could make many more. "I thought 100 hats would be a huge challenge," she wrote, "But it was surprisingly easy. That's when I knew I needed a real challenge." The logical step from 100 would be 1,000, but that still seemed too easy. "A thousand was doable," she continued, "But when I thought about 10,000, I realized it would be a ma.s.sive goal. That's why I wanted to do it!"2 Having a way to measure your goal is critical. Whenever I went to a new country, I'd pull up an Evernote file listing the Wikipedia count of all 193 countries. I put a bold X next to each completed country, as well as the total number of completed countries at the top. As the list moved from 150/193 to 175/193 ... and then inched closer to the final ten countries, I felt a surge of accomplishment.3 In some ways, the quest was monotonous, but that was the point! I liked the monotony. I liked the routine. I also learned a key skill of travel. More important than the ability to speak a lot of languages (not my forte) or competence in packing everything in a small carry-on bag (it gets easy when you pack and unpack every day) is the ability to wait. Once you make your peace with waiting-sometimes for hours on end with no clear resolution in sight-the traveling life becomes much easier.

Three Hundred Marathons and Counting (But Why?)

John "Maddog" Wallace qualifies as an obsessive. For the past three decades he has been running ... and running ... and running. A former smoker, John could hardly run at all when he began. When he ran his first marathon in Reno, Nevada, he hit the infamous "long-distance wall" and struggled through the final 4.2 miles. At the finish, he said to anyone who'd listen, "I'm never doing that again!" (First lesson: Don't make resolutions immediately after finishing your first big race.) When I first started reading about Mr. Maddog, I thought the next part of the story would be something like this: "A few months after the first marathon experience, he started running again, this time learning to run smarter. Gradually, he grew to appreciate the idea of running another long race. Eventually he was hooked."

But people like Maddog are not like you or me. Most of the story I had in mind turned out to be true, with one small exception. Instead of waiting a few months to ease into running again, Maddog waited two days. Then, instead of registering for another race several months away, he signed up for the Sacramento marathon ... merely two weeks later. Most doctors and running coaches would advise against such a feat, but Maddog finished the race nine minutes faster than the first.4 For his third marathon, Maddog had the good sense to wait longer-this time a whole three weeks. He ran the San Francisco marathon, observing the harbor from the Golden Gate Bridge as he strode through the last miles.

The next year he moved to Dallas and joined a running group where he was first given the nickname "Maddog" because of his persistence and hyper-accelerated racing schedule. Maddog ran more marathons, holding up better and gaining confidence. Over time, the goal just took hold: He would run everywhere.

At age fifty-four he officially began a quest. He has now run more than three hundred marathons in more than one hundred countries. For good measure, he also ran a marathon in all fifty U.S. states-twice!

Another committed athlete, Martin Parnell, worked his way up to an even bigger goal. He started by cycling from Cairo to Cape Town, stopping along the way to experience a way of life much different from the small town he called home in Alberta, Canada. The high point was playing table tennis with a twelve-year-old boy in an African village. "Over one hundred kids yelled and cheered as we played the game," Martin told me. "At that point I realized the power of sport and play."

Martin lost the Ping-Pong match but completed his cycling trip in Cape Town, excited about the possibilities of undertaking more big trips in the name of charity. He was drawn to the idea of quests and designed an entire series of them, partially constructed around the criteria established by Guinness World Records.

Martin's goal is to raise at least $1 million for a children's charity he supports. His 2013 goals included climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in twenty-four hours instead of the usual five days (by the way, this will be after running the Kilimanjaro marathon), and competing in seven trail-running or mountain-biking events.

While I was checking out his blog, where he posts updates several times each week, I noticed that he was facing a tough decision: to sign up for an upcoming fifty-kilometer race in Calgary, or to set the Guinness World Record for running the fastest marathon time in a lacrosse uniform.

In 2010 he ran 250 marathons in a single year-perhaps his most impressive feat of all.

Hey, slow down! I wanted to say to Martin. Or don't slow down, since it seems that people like Martin never slow down. But as I had with Maddog, I wondered why was he doing all of these things. Why not raise money another way, or otherwise stay active without killing yourself all the time?

Unfortunately, emailing with Maddog and Martin didn't yield the precise answers I wanted. Like many obsessives, they both seemed to recognize that their projects are unusual, but their exact motivations are hard to pin down. It reminded me of when I was first traveling. I just wanted to do it! It was an internal drive that I couldn't ignore. The scope of the task felt challenging and exciting.

I finally asked Martin to tell me something that he found especially difficult, and here's what he said.

The toughest time was in the summer of 2010. It was July and the rains came and never stopped. The rain pounding on my bedroom window would wake me up and I knew that once I started running I'd be soaked within ten minutes and stay that way for another five hours. I was stiff and sore from the previous four marathons that week and all I wanted to do was stay in bed with a cup of tea and the newspaper.

What do you think he did next? If you guessed that he went out in the rain and ran his fifth marathon of the week, you'd be right.

The One-Year MIT Challenge

I met Scott Young on a freezing night in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the coldest capital city of North America. It was January and the hotel staff warned me not to leave my face uncovered for long if I went outside. Scott was a native, though: When we went to a restaurant, I remained bundled up in coat, scarf, and gloves while he dressed in a T-shirt.

Shoes by the Door = Instant Accountability On the road, I'm frequently tired from long flights, time zone changes, and the occasional tequila drink. Upon entering my hotel or guesthouse room, the first thing I do is unpack-no relaxing or checking email just yet! Whatever I expect to need for the rest of my stay gets placed in one or two areas, usually a workstation at the desk and one side of the closet for clothes. Then, if I know I should exercise, I remove my running shoes and place them by the door. This accomplishes two goals at once: First, it's one less thing I have to worry about when waking up tired to hit the gym or nearby sand dunes. Second, it creates instant accountability. I could skip the exercise, but I'll have to look at my shoes every time I head out the door, and I'll have to repack them later.

Putting the shoes by the door is a good way to make sure you don't take the easy way out. Maddog Wallace chose an even more effective way to make himself accountable: He told everyone what he was doing, and they watched. Even better-or worse, on the hard days-they counted on him to finish the task.

Scott was a recent college graduate who had long been drawn to independent learning. He'd studied abroad in France, and was in the process of doc.u.menting some of his "learn anything quickly" methods for anyone who was interested.

His big experiment went much further than a year abroad. Scott had begun work on a business, but was interested in computer science as well. It's hard to change your major to a challenging subject in the late phase of your undergraduate education (most people do it the other way, switching to an easier subject when a tough one proves too hard), so when Scott finished his degree he felt like he was missing something.

Going back for another four-year degree was an unattractive and expensive option. Since he enjoyed independent learning, Scott looked around for alternatives. That's when he found his quest: He'd master the world-renowned MIT computer science curriculum on his own. Every lecture and test was online for public viewing, but almost no one completed the program in its entirety. Instead, they'd typically take a look at the exams, complete a few sample questions, or perhaps complete a single course out of curiosity.5 Scott's aim was higher. With no exceptions or exemptions, he would take on the entire curriculum and fulfill all the school's requirements. It wasn't the same experience as actually going to MIT-he'd lack the access to professors, computer labs, and interaction with other students-but he'd cover the same material, and the course grading was completely objective: On the computer science exams, you either got the answers right or you didn't. Finally, every good goal has a deadline, so Scott decided on one year.

Scott moved to Vancouver, a much warmer and more cosmopolitan city. Five days a week, he got up at six a.m. and immediately started studying, finishing around six p.m. with only minimal breaks. The sixth day was spent working on his business, and the seventh day was for rest.

Scott's business work was fairly public, and since he was suddenly available only once a week, he decided to post updates on the project, along with the complete exam results, to anyone who cared to see.6 This decision produced mixed results. While he attracted some supporters, he also attracted a number of critics who hara.s.sed him with every post. Even though Scott posted all his work online, including the mistakes, he still heard from people who believed he was arrogant for taking on the challenge. Others disagreed with some detail of his methodology, or posted anonymous comments attacking him for no good reason.

Dealing with the criticism was a distraction and harder than doing the work itself. Nevertheless, Scott persevered. One year later, the quest was complete: He'd pa.s.sed every single course, all with decent grades and several with flying colors. The critics disappeared-especially the ones who said he could never succeed. Scott looked back at all the work, all those early mornings, the exams he'd gradually become comfortable facing down. He'd done it! And then he was tired, so he went to Paris for a month's vacation.

As Homer tells the story, Odysseus mastered countless challenges during his twenty-year saga-challenges that included near seduction by Sirens, almost becoming a tasty snack for the Cyclops, and a tough battle when he finally made it home. He also endured a lot of monotony, with the same thing happening day in, day out. Always, though, he kept going. He kept moving forward.

One time I took the train to an airport hotel before an early morning flight the next day. My plan was to get some sleep before hopping the shuttle to the concourse at five a.m. However, I was so used to going to the airport that I forgot to get off at the hotel stop. Instead, I rode all the way to the terminal before realizing my error. Oops.

It wasn't a big mistake-I'd only gone about fifteen minutes out of my way. But when I got back on the train to return, I realized I had a choice: Take a stop that was farther away from my hotel, and walk the half mile in the cold, or wait on the train an extra ten minutes for the more logical stop.

I knew right away which choice I'd make: I'd choose to walk. Better to be in control of your circ.u.mstances, I thought. Better to make the active choice.

The mantra of the traveler is to make peace with waiting. The mantra of the quester is to keep moving forward. Whatever it takes, whether facing an immense challenge or spirit-sapping tedium, just keep making progress.

You, too, should proceed on your quest, choosing forward motion wherever possible. Along the way, you'll gain a few skills. You'll learn that not everything will proceed as planned, and you'll learn that everything will probably be fine when it doesn't. You'll make your peace with routine and monotony.

Remember The long, hard slog is a key part of most quests.

We can't opt out of monotony, but we can choose which form it takes.

When you have the option between backtracking and making progress, choose progress.

1English teachers, please direct complaints regarding the condensed Odyssey timeline to Random House, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

2You can sign up to request one of your own hats at SheMakesHats.com. It will take approximately twenty-eight years to make all ten thousand, so be prepared to wait.

3People sometimes ask what I'll do when new countries crop up. Fortunately, this doesn't happen very often. In the past ten years, only two new countries have been recognized (East Timor and South Sudan).

4Obligatory disclaimer: Unless you're an experienced runner, and also insane, do not attempt to replicate Maddog's race schedule.

5Why does MIT put so much course work online for free? First, because it has far more demand than supply (there is no shortage of MIT applicants). Second, it's great marketing for its other programs. Putting the course work online encourages people like Scott to take on a great challenge, and it also motivates authors of lesser stature to write about it.

6See all of Scott's notes and exams at www.ScottHYoung.com/blog/mit-challenge.

Chapter 10.

The Love of the Craft

I want to be remembered as a person who wasn't afraid to start things.

-TINA ROTH EISENBERG Lesson: EFFORT CAN BE ITS OWN REWARD.

Some people are motivated by achievement, others by process-but still others are motivated by a specific blend of both. These people are all about making things and sharing them with the world, over and over.

Why create? Because you can. Or for some people, because it's what they love to do more than anything else. They like the act of creation and the act of distribution. When they finish a task, they ask, "What's next?"

In some cases, they'll even work for free.

Smart companies understand that financial compensation isn't the only reason people come to work. In an ideal world, employees show up because they enjoy working on something meaningful. The chance to build something or be part of a team working on an ambitious project can be a powerful motivator.

In the case of Ron Avitzur, a software engineer who worked on a contract for Apple, the desire to create a project went far beyond the usual employee loyalty. Before the contract was prematurely canceled, Ron had been building a graphing calculator program in the early 1990s. He'd worked on it for a long time, investing many hours and a lot of energy. When his contract was terminated, he ceased being an employee ... yet he wasn't ready to move on.

After he was let go, Ron discovered that his badge hadn't been deactivated and that he could still come and go in the building, which was supposed to be secure. That's when he made a decision to "uncancel" his project and keep working on it himself.

Ron recruited a colleague, Greg Robbins, whose contract had also been recently canceled. In a stroke of genius, Greg told his former manager that he was now reporting to Ron, and Ron told anyone who asked that he was now reporting to Greg.1 The tag team duo of Ron and Greg worked up to sixteen hours a day on the secret project, and aside from the fib about who was reporting to whom, they never lied to anyone. When people asked what they were working on, they told the truth-garnering instant respect from other engineers and software testers, who appreciated the value of working on a project for the love of it.

As the months went by, the effort grew more intense. A deadline was coming up by which the software had to be finalized so that it could be shipped with new computers. It was one thing to make a working version of the product, but it was quite another to create a "mostly finished" version that could go out to consumers. User testing was a challenge, since the project didn't officially exist. Then there was the small matter of getting the software loaded onto the operating system that would be installed on the computers. Finally, word was spreading about the secret project, and not everyone was happy. Another group moved into the vacant offices that Ron and Greg had been operating from, and the facilities manager grew suspicious. The researchers' badges were eventually canceled, and after a few weeks during which the two men hung around outside and waited for someone else to open the door so they could sneak in, they were warned that security would have them evicted-presumably on a more lasting basis this time.

Ron, Greg, and the growing team of conspirators met each of these challenges head-on. Other engineers would materialize to help with needed quality-a.s.surance testing. The guy who was responsible for the final operating-system software showed up at Ron's new office at two a.m. one night with instructions on how the graphing calculator program could be included. Greg was eventually able to surrept.i.tiously register the project as the creation of an outside vendor, getting them new badges that opened the doors.

After six months of sneaking into the building every day, eluding security, and recruiting allies, Ron and Greg saw their software ship on every new Macintosh computer, more than twenty million machines. The graphing calculator received glowing feedback from users and was even referenced by Apple executives during demonstrations. The stealth project was a complete and total victory. Ron concludes his story with the wry observation: "We wanted to make a Windows version, too, but Microsoft had better building security."

Follow the Flow

What compels someone to go into work day after day-after their contract ends, without any salary, and without an actual job? It's simple: When you find something you love to do, you don't want to let it go.

In Ron's case, it didn't matter that the project had been canceled. The project wasn't complete! He had to keep going by any means necessary. He had no mortgage to pay or kids to support, and was working so many hours that he wasn't spending much money otherwise. Providing free programming services wasn't a sustainable endeavor for the rest of his life, but for a few months he was willing to go all-in on the project he loved.

Have you ever worked on something that felt so engaging that you simply didn't want it to end? The time goes by and you don't notice. You go to bed thinking about the project, and it's the first thing on your mind when you wake up. Perhaps you wouldn't sneak into your office to work after being terminated, but if you found something you loved, you'd want to hang on to it for as long as you could.

Will this feeling last forever? Probably not. That's why you should ride the wave while you can.

Even better, what if you could create your own wave, independent of the whim of a big company or someone else's decision-making power? That's what many creative people have done. Let's meet a few.

Exhibit A: Poke the Box, 365 Days a Year Seth G.o.din gets up early, makes a cup of herbal tea, and sits at a big desk overlooking the Hudson River in New York. Then he settles into work, and he doesn't get up for a long time.

Seth has hundreds of thousands of fans and at least a few notable critics, but there's one thing about him that everyone agrees on: The man is prolific. According to him, he reads, researches, and writes an average of fifteen hours a day. He publishes a post on his blog every single day, no exceptions.2 At least once a year, he publishes a book-sometimes twice or three times a year, and sometimes more than one at a time. One day, a huge box showed up at my door. It contained what Seth called his "behemoth," a seven-hundred-page, 275,000-word monster compilation of several years of his posts. In addition to the writing projects, Seth regularly launches new commercial ventures, and frequently invites students to apply for internships in which they can work on G.o.din projects while developing their own entrepreneurial skills. Somewhere in the process, he sleeps at least a few hours every night.

It's important to note that not all of Seth's projects are big successes. In fact, by his account he's had far more failures. He invented the first-ever videotaped aquarium and fireplace. For some reason, it wasn't a huge seller. In the early days of the Internet, he published a book ent.i.tled "Email Addresses of the Rich and Famous," which resulted in a celebrity backlash.

The lesson, as he explains it: "If I fail more than you do, I win. Built into this notion is the ability to keep playing. If you get to keep playing, sooner or later you're gonna make it succeed. The people who lose are the ones who don't fail at all, or the ones who fail so big they don't get to play again."

Seth frequently writes about the concept of shipping, a term he uses as the means of disseminating work to the world. In Seth's worldview, art doesn't exist until it is widely shared. "I've viewed my life for twenty-five years as one more opportunity to poke the box," he says, "One more opportunity to try something different."

Exhibit B: Make the Box, a Dozen Times a Day In the trendy Dumbo neighborhood in Brooklyn, I followed a set of emailed directions to an industrial-looking building. After riding up its creaky elevator, I entered a brightly lit coworking s.p.a.ce with a couple of dozen people scurrying about. "Hi, Chris!" said a familiar voice. The voice belonged to Tina Roth Eisenberg, also known as Swiss Miss to her legion of fans and followers.

I'd first met Tina at a workshop I facilitated a few months earlier, and she invited me to visit her headquarters at Studiomates, the coworking s.p.a.ce she founded in Brooklyn. As I chatted with her, I also met several other people who shared the s.p.a.ce. Some were colleagues, working directly on projects created by Tina. Others were working entirely on their own, and just rented a works.p.a.ce. Still others appeared to be in ambiguous roles, doing some of their own work and some work on Tina's projects.

At least five times a day, almost every day of the week, Tina posted a short entry on her website. Many of the entries related to new design finds from around the world that had arrived in her inbox from the fans. Tina was known as a digital curator, a person of influence who helps ideas spread with her endors.e.m.e.nt and links.

Meanwhile, crates of temporary tattoos crowded the room, and throughout the day various colleagues stuffed orders in envelopes.

One Friday each month, Tina hosts a popular gathering called Creative Mornings. Featuring a talk by an artist or other interesting person, the gatherings are always well attended. After starting up in New York, the talks spread to a Zurich chapter, and then to Los Angeles. Eventually there were more than fifty additional chapters worldwide, with hundreds of speakers and tens of thousands of attendees taking part. It's essentially a global salon of ideas and community, with event costs covered by sponsors and no tickets being sold for profit.

Notice a theme yet? Tina stays busy. But not just busy-Tina stays busy making and shipping work she believes in. It's a healthy compulsion, a desire for deliverables. "I want to be remembered as a person who wasn't afraid to start things," she says.

Many of Tina's ventures began as side projects. The temporary-tattoo business started when her daughter Ella brought home a set of body stickers from another company. They were ugly and didn't apply well, frustrating Tina's strong design ethic. Even though she didn't know much about tattoos, she knew about art and collaboration-so she formed Tattly, the temporary-tattoo company that offers great designs and easy application. Creative Mornings came about through her desire to bring creative collaborators together.