Make It A Mission

Twenty thousand miles. All 48 contiguous states. Six months in an RV. Move every three days. Pack everything up. Drive. Unpack. Repeat. When you describe our 48-state RV trip that way, it sounds terrible. It's hard to not see it as just too much work. Travel has friction. The bigger the adventure, the more friction it usually has. Airports, packing, weather, early mornings, long drives, missed connections, bad meals, exhaustion. Eventually, every great adventure requires you to do something you would rather not be doing. I've learned something after doing this hundreds of times.

Make it a mission.

Our RV trip across the country was more than a six-month road trip. We were going to take our family to all 48 contiguous states. That was the mission. Suddenly the long drives had a reason. Packing every three days had a reason. The next state mattered because it moved us toward something we had collectively decided to accomplish. The exact same thing happened when my family traveled to 52 countries in 52 weeks.

People hear about the trip and initially focus on the incredible parts. Then eventually someone starts doing the math. You flew almost every week? You packed and unpacked 52 times? You moved through airports, hotels and Airbnbs for an entire year? Who would want to do that? Fair question. But we weren't randomly wandering around the world. We had a mission: 52 countries in 52 weeks. Every flight was part of it. Every packed bag was part of it. Even the problems became part of it. The mission didn't eliminate the difficult parts. It gave them purpose.

I saw an even more extreme version of this recently when one of my closest friends decided his midlife crisis would be riding a bicycle from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine. More than 3,000 miles across the country. Forty-plus days. Often around 100 miles a day. He wasn't a cyclist, he just decided to do it.

I met him in Bozeman, Montana, and rode one day with him in support. I do a lot of adventure, and by the end of that day my assessment was clear: I never want to do that again. It was physically difficult, lonely in stretches and occasionally dangerous. There were long periods with nothing particularly enjoyable about pedaling a bicycle down the side of a road.

The next morning he got back on the bike. Because he wasn't going for a bike ride. He was riding across America. That distinction changes everything. The soreness matters differently when it represents another 100 miles toward Maine. The bad weather becomes a story. The lonely stretch becomes something you survived. Even the miserable days acquire value because they belong to something larger.

Then he reached Portland. The pedaling stopped. The pain disappeared. What remained was the fact that he had ridden a bicycle across the United States. He has that forever. That's the power of a mission. If you value the achievement, the difficult parts of getting there become much more palatable.

There is nothing wrong with flying somewhere beautiful and sitting beside a pool for a week. Sometimes that's exactly what you need. But I've noticed that a lot of people, particularly high performers, aren't actually very good at it. Give a CEO ten days on a tropical beach and by day three they're checking email and looking for something to do. Give that same person a mission to swim at a different beach every day or find the best beach on the island, and suddenly the trip has momentum.

Now you're researching. Driving somewhere. Finding the hidden beach. Comparing them. You've created a story. The mission doesn't need to be extreme. Eat at the five best taco stands in Mexico City. Play ten historic golf courses. Visit every national park in Utah. Ride a motorcycle from one end of an island to the other. Take your kids to every Major League Baseball stadium.

The point isn't the size of the mission. It's having one. A mission gives an adventure a beginning, an objective and an end. It creates progress. It gives the people traveling with you something to share and, when things inevitably get difficult, a reason to keep moving. Most importantly, a mission changes what remains after the trip is over. Six months driving around America becomes taking your family to all 48 states. A year of airports and hotels becomes 52 countries in 52 weeks. Forty miserable days on a bicycle becomes riding across America.

The effort becomes part of the accomplishment. So the next time you're planning a trip, don't stop at where should we go. Ask one more question: What are we going there to accomplish? Give it a target. Make it measurable. Make it slightly unreasonable. Make it something you'll be proud to say you did. Make it a mission.