370 Brad Borkan ~ How Outdoors Adventures Can Help You Make Better Decisions In Life

Transcript

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 370. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another exciting guest.

This week I am speaking with Brad Borkan, author of the book When Your Life Depends On It: Extreme Decision Making Lessons From the Antarctic.

Now Brad and I know each other in the real world, we first met up at a Meet-Up Group for authors in London, and I really, really, enjoyed his book. I loved reading the stories of Antarctic explorers, but even more than that, I loved how he brought it back to practical, real-life, lessons. I had read stories about Shackleton before, and his trips to the Antarctic, and they were really entertaining, but this book really brings it back to how you can use their experience to make better decisions in your life, based on how they made life or death decisions 100+ years ago.

So I know that most of us are probably not going to make it to the South Pole, but we do all have our own adventures in life. Many of us have our own outdoors adventures. And this episode will help you learn how to make better decisions in life, which I think is a super-important skill.

So let’s learn a little bit more about Brad. Brad Borkan has a lifelong interest in how people survive, and thrive, in almost impossible situations.  Brad the is co-author of the book, When Your Life Depends on It. That book also puts the reader right into the action of life-and-death decisions made by early explorers. It also looks at what we can learn from their situations to help us make better decisions in our modern lives.

Brad is an author and lecturer and has presented at business and Antarctic conferences. He has appeared on cable TV in the US, he has been a guest on podcasts and internet radio programs as well as being a keynote speaker at a literary festival. He has has also travelled to all 7 continents. In 2019, Brad gave a guest lecture about his book on a 114 passenger “expedition” cruise to Antarctica.

By the way – When Your Life Depends on It has been endorsed by Sir Randulph Fiennes, the world’s greatest living explorer, which is super-exciting.

Brad is originally from the US, and is now based in London. He was also honoured to be made a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. He and his co-author are working on a new book about decision-making to be released at the end of this year. His website is http://extreme-decisions.com

So without further ado, let’s jump into this episode. Here is what you are going to learn: How people make decisions—both the “good” and “bad” ones. How we can learn to make better decisions in life. Things we can learn from Antarctic explorers. Why it’s so life-changing to recognise the teams we have in our lives, we have a lot of teams that we may not recognise as teams — we have a really interesting conversation about this. Finally we talk about how we can use our own outdoor adventures to make better decisions in life.

Holly: So we are here today with Brad Borkan talking about how outdoors adventures can help you to make decisions in life. Hello Brad!

Brad: Hi Holly. It is great to be here.

Holly: I am really looking forward to this conversation with you because I just finished reading Brad’s book which is called, When Your Life Depends On It, Extreme Decision Making Lessons from the Antarctic, and I really, really, enjoyed the book, so thank you for writing that.

Brad: It is a great pleasure to be here. Those are fabulous stories from the Antarctic in the early 1900s, so.

Holly: They are, they are-–such extreme decisions and every decision that you make could lead to life or death. So how did you become interested in Antarctic exploration, where did the idea for this book come from?

Brad: It sort of started from childhood and this interest in: why do people make the decisions that they do? Why do people do things that are extreme and dangerous? Because in myself I am not someone who lives at the edge, I am not someone who is going to go and climb tall mountains and do dangerous things like jumping out of aeroplanes and skydiving and things like that. So these people, when I found out about and started reading books about early Antarctic explorers, when I was about eight years old, I just was captivated by the stories.

And, as you said at the beginning, there are stories about life and survival and trying to do things that were out-of-the-ordinary, and putting themselves in danger for the purpose of science and discovery and exploration. It is just such a thrilling topic and I guess the reason it gravitated towards me so much was these people came near death all the time but very rarely ever died.

Holly: Yeah it is shocking to me. I had read about Shackleton before, but I hadn’t heard about all the other stories that you include in the book, and it is just shocking that so many of them came back alive!

Brad: It is, it is really quite breathtaking when you think about the sorts of dangers they put themselves in, time and time and time again, and it is not just the physical challenge of Antarctica where you have extremes of cold and wind and blizzards and things like that, but they are coping with scurvy and frostbite and snow blindness — and also the risk of falling in a crevasse!

Holly: Yeah!

Brad: They were amazing people and amazing situations. 

 

Holly: So for anyone who is new to this topic can you refresh us on when did all of this happen? When was the peak in Antarctic exploration, because it is shocking to me that people were doing this so long ago in such terrible gear! {laughing}

Brad: I know! If you think about Antarctica, if you go back to the 1820s, which is actually in the realm of history, when you think about the United States, the United States was formed in 1776 as a nation and yet we think about that as being a long time ago, but it wasn’t that long in terms of civilisation. And yet you look at Antarctica, in the 1820s we knew more about the moon, the cycles of the moon and the distance from the earth and the eclipse and things like that, but we didn’t even know that Antarctica existed. The first person to set foot on it was in 1895 and the time period we are talking about is 1901 to 1917–so it is just after someone has set foot on Antarctica and people are really trying to get to the South Pole, that is really at the heart of the stories.

Holly: So this was just over a hundred years ago and things have changed, the world has changed so much since then and outdoors gear has changed so much since then. Can you give us an idea of what kinds of conditions these people were going into and what kinds of gear they had to really survive the conditions?

Brad: Yes it is fascinating period of time, because the world was becoming very technologically advanced—I know to the modern age it seems very primitive but, for their time, cars were just being invented; aeroplanes were just being invented; you had communications technologies becoming prevalent; electricity…all sorts of things were being developed and yet at the same time they go down to Antarctica and they don’t have any of this. So there was no communication, as I say in the book, there was no communication except as far as you can shout.

Holly: Oh yeah.

Brad: So if they get into trouble they are on their own. They can’t even call to their colleagues even if they are only half a mile away, this is literally, they are isolated, they have to bring down all their own food. There are animals, seals and penguins that live on the coastline, but once you move onto the interior, even a few miles, you are away from all that. So if you are trying to go into the centre of Antarctica, to get to the South Pole, which is about 850 miles from the coastline, you have to bring everything and that includes fuel for cooking and melting snow for water.

So people don’t think about the idea [and tend to think] that at least if there is snow around, at least they will have water. As you may know from hiking, you put snow in your mouth, that is fine you get a little bit of water from it, but if you do that often enough you will lower your core body temperature and it can actually be fatal.

So there was this challenge around the food they were carrying and they didn’t know anything about vitamins, calories. As one person described it to me once, what that they are doing was called man-holing, which was pulling a sledge. Some teams used dogs and some teams used ponies, but the ponies didn’t work very well. For the most part it was man-holing, which was basically strapping on these harnesses and pulling your sledge, which was made out of wood with metal runners and pulling it across the snow and ice and actually they found the metal didn’t work very well, so it really just the wood runners, and it is carrying everything: your tent, your sleeping bag and they didn’t have thinsulate and they didn’t have down and no plastic, so it was all wooden crates for the food. It was hard going! And then you had to melt the snow for your water… it is just daunting why they did all this.

Holly: Yeah and these were really long journeys so, as you said, it was 850 miles from the coast to the South Pole, roughly, how long of a journey was that?

Brad: Well you are talking, roughly, you are travelling about anywhere from five to 12 miles a day. Maybe on a good day 17 miles, 18 or 20 miles a day, it depends on the surface and also if you got caught up in a blizzard and would be stuck in your tent for three or four days, where you are not travelling at all. So you are talking, it could be 100 days on the ice, it could be further, it could be much more than that. So it is three months on the ice and it is a lot carrying food. Now what they were doing, there were main depos [for supplies] along the way and picking them up on the way back, but even still there were many hardships.

From the point of view of all this, what is interesting is, while it is wonderful history, there is a lot we can learn from what they did for modern life. I think that is when you get into the grips of the book and what we are trying to do with it, these stories are not just: wow that is cool history, that is really fascinating what these guys did. It is more like: what can I take away for my modern life? What can your listeners take away? How do you deal with this COVID era? How do you deal with the challenges of this modern life? Or juggling work and achievements and goals and finances and all this sort of stuff and there are tons and tons of lessons that come out of these expeditions.

Holly: At what point did you realise that you had enough lessons from these Antarctic stories to write a book about it?

Brad: Well it is interesting, maybe about eight or ten years ago, I decided that I would pursue my interest in this, I always had an interest in decision-making and had this background interest in what happened in Antarctica.

Later, about ten years ago, I started attending Antarctic conferences, and listening to people talk about the history and all this stuff, I was thinking: well, these great stories, these great expeditions, all the achievements and all the hardships and, at the same time, I realised that no one had ever looked at the expeditions from the point of view of decisions.The common thread, through all these expeditions, was the decision making. People knew about what they were wearing, or what they were trying to accomplish, or other elements about their biographies and who these people were. But to me the most exciting thing was the life-and-death decisions, how did they actually make these decisions? How did they deal with the aftermath when they made a bad decision?

You put a bunch of men together, and they were all men at that time, into a small environment, because if they are living in a hut or a tent, it is a very small cramped environment, in very adverse conditions, cold, lack of food, things like that, not knowing if they are going to survive, and yet you come out of this period of these six expeditions and there is no history of fist fights, people didn’t murder each other, or sabotage the expedition. Why did that happen when ever other expedition it was different? You go look at the expeditions to the Arctic, and even expeditions to the Antarctic, but with these expeditions what was different? And I think that is what is so eye-opening about this, is that somehow there was a difference, and what we are trying to do is articulate that difference.

Holly: Tell us a little bit more about your book, how is it structured? What kinds of things do you talk about in it?

Brad: Okay, we were very interested in the decision-making so we didn’t approach the book chronologically, which is sort of the logical way you would look at these expeditions i.e: 1901, start with Captain Scott, and move on to Shackleton, then Captain Scott goes back down again… that is all interesting history but what is really interesting is: let’s focus on decision-making, the chapters deal with types of decisions about promises being made, about what happens when you fall in a crevasse? Where do you seek inspiration?

There is a wonderful story, it is like the third chapter and Moss happens to be on his own. He is on his own because he was travelling with two other men and you have got to figure out ways to travel that make sense, much like you do with your hiking, your backpacking; you have got to figure out strategies that are going to ensure your survival.

So they had two sledges, and they called them sledges using the British term, and what they said was, we will put all the important gear—most of the food, everything— on what they considered to be the second sledge, with people and dogs pulling the first sledge, as this team had dogs, and [they decided]: what we will do, we will be the lead sledge and the man leading the other sledge will follow behind. And so, because you don’t want to fall into a crevasse, and crevasses can be hidden by what are called snow lids or levels, basically ice or snow that looks like solid ground and isn’t, and you step on it and the thing collapses underneath and you fall in a crevasse. And they said: we will put all the important stuff behind us and we will go forward and then if we fall in a crevasse at least everything behind us won’t fall in. And, lo and behold, they discover a snow lid and they turn around to warn the other guy and he is not there, and nor is his sledge, and nor are the dogs. He has fallen into a different crevasse and totally disappeared and they run over to that area and he is gone, the crevasse is deep and they know he is not going to survive, there is no way to pull him out, that’s it.

And so they are on their own and Moss and this other fellow travelled, trying to get back to camp again, with no communication except as far as they can shout, and it gets down to… the other guy dies, they are slowly eating the dogs, killing the dogs and eating them, because that is their only food source, because all their food was on the other sledge. Basically the litter of dogs has a lot of vitamin A and is poisonous to humans and both slowly die, the other guy dies first and Moss is on his own and ends up falling into a crevasse on his own. The only reason he can pull himself out is because the sledge gets stuck at the top, in some ice, and he is dangling from the harness, he is attached to the sledge through his harness, and basically has to climb out about 14 feet. Where does he get that inspiration? It is just such an amazing story. This guy climbs, he is wearing all his old clothing covered in ice and snow and two or three sets of gloves and heavy hiking books, and pulls himself up and at the top of the crevasse breaks away and he can’t pull himself up anymore and falls back down and the sledge fortunately doesn’t come back down on top of him and he is stuck and like: what am I going to do now, I may as well just give up? At that point he gets inspired by a poem.

These guys found inspiration in various different sorts of ways, things they would read or songs, this happened to be a poem, this was about how living is hard but dying is easy and he thinks about this and thinks: well, I am just going to give it another try. It is a remarkable story. Eventually he survives this, goes back to base camp, where they are a few men waiting for him, but they are waiting for him because the ship, which can’t stay for long in the bay because it will ice over and get stuck in the ice, has already sailed away, it sailed away five hours before he got back. It is winter for another half year before he can be rescued. These stories are mind-boggling about survival.

Holly: I think the will to live is just so much stronger than we ever realise until we are ever in one of those situations. I have seen documentaries about two guys that were mountain climbing and the one guy cut off the other guy and he fell down and had to crawl back to camp. I remember watching him and thinking: I don’t now if I could do that, I don’t know if I would be the one crawling back to camp on my broken legs or would I just curl up and dies of over-exposure? But I think, when you are in that situation, something kicks in.

Brad: I think that is right and I think one of the great lessons from the early explorers is: you are where you are and it is such a great lesson for the era we live right now, for them it was like, you just put one foot in front of the other and you starting moving forward and you don’t dwell on how you got here. Being in a crevasse you can’t sit there thinking: how did I get here? …we just had a whole ton of bad luck. It is like: we are where we are and we have just got to pull ourselves out or put one step in front of the other and that simple task, I have just go to keep going. And you talk about this in your South Downs book, in your walk, when you are like: do I keep going or do I give up? You know it is like these are hard choices and you have got to say: okay this is where I am, I didn’t bring enough water today, I am going to suffer but I will keep going and that is persevering.

Holly: Yeah it is, it is. And I think persevering is a lot easier when you have a really clear goal. So like when you are trying to get to the South Pole and be the first guy to get to the South Pole, or when you want to walk a trail, but in day-to-day life I think a lot of people don’t have clear goals, or they haven’t made conscious decisions in life and they have just found themselves in situations where they are like: how did I get here and what do I do about this?

Brad: Well that is exactly right. One of the reasons we think that the expeditions did so well was that they had very clear goals and everyone on the expedition knew the goal and knew the set of goals. I think this is important in one’s personal life, saying: I have got this goal.

If I can relate a personal story, it relates also to the Antarctic, there is a story of Shackleton and he is trying to get to the South Pole and it took two years to set up the expedition. He and three others are walking to the South Pole and they get to within a 103 miles of the South Pole and they are running out of food and they have depo’d food along for the way back but they haven’t depo’d enough food and they know that. They are looking at each other, they are saying: we have gone out 700-and-something miles, we are 103 miles from our goal, we could persevere through or we may not survive, almost guaranteed not to have enough food to get back and no one is going to come and rescue us, this is just the way it is going to be. So do we be heroes and get to the South Pole and probably die on the way back, or do we turn around?

And I think this is where we look at life, and we look at our goals and say: we have got this goal and getting that goal is going to be hard to persevere, or we say: I am going to stop and decide today is not the day for that goal and I am going to find a different goal. This comes back to my book. I am just going to finish that story, which is that Shackleton looks at that situation and when you think it is just a binary decision, it is either we go forward, and we get to the South Pole, but we will probably die on the way back, or we turn around at this very point, 103 miles from the South Pole. And he is like: no there is a third choice, the third choice is that we leave our sleeping bag and tent and everything behind, and we just walk forward, as far South as we can for one day, we plant the flag and then we turn around and go back. Why would you do this? It is because he went across the 100 mile mark. He wanted to say when he got back to Britain that he had got to 100 miles of the South Pole—it sounds a whole lot better than we got to 103 miles. They got to 97 miles of the South Pole, they planted a British flag and then they started to walk back to their camp and then they packed it up and started heading the long journey back.

That was really to say: if I can’t achieve my goal I am going to do something different and that’s exactly what I did in terms of writing a book. I was working for a software company, I have got a goal of achieving a certain level in the company, I always knew I wasn’t going to get there, it wasn’t in my DNA, it just was not going to happen. I thought about the Antarctic expeditions and I thought: what can I learn from all this? I thought: well I will plant my flag and that is as far as I am going to get in the software company, that’s it, that’s my career, it is done, but what can I do different? And then I thought: ah I want to go and write this Antarctic book, I have always wanted to write about this decision-making thing and Antarctic thing and that was the start of my author career and that was how I met you.

I think in this era which we are living right now, everyone’s plans have been disrupted – personal plans, career plans, our plans for how we are raising our kids, everything has been disrupted. We have got to say if I am not going to plant my flag then maybe different flags. Now I am going to set a new goal, a new aspiration. There are a lot of lessons that come out of these expeditions that are very relevant to today.

Holly: And so how do you think that people can learn to find that third choice because I think it is so easy to see life as being binary, it is black and white, it is that or it is that. How can people open up their perspective to find the third or fourth or other options?

Brad: That is a really challenging question.

Holly: I know! {laughing}

Brad: It comes down to trying to rethink, to break patterns. We are taught that every decision is yes or no, every decision is forward or back, every decision is go and no go and often there is something different than that. Try something a little bit different: what if I took this approach, what if I look at it from this other perspective? What is I look at the perspective of not me in this situation, but someone looking at me in the situation, what would they say?

In fact there is a very funny situation and it comes out of this—so Shackleton makes this decision to not go to the South Pole, to pass the 100-mile mark, and on their journey back he writes to his wife and he said, “I thought you would rather have a live donkey than a dead lion”. [In other words] he would rather live to see another day and you can’t always be the hero. Just look at it another way: I can’t always be the hero and I am going to try to achieve something different.  You must have had the same situations in your walks and in your life?

Holly: Yeah certainly never a life and death situation, but, yeah, it is so challenging to get out of the this or that perspective and step back and find the other options. As you brought up, the first time I walked the South Downs Way, I got to that day where we had record heat in the UK, I think that was the day it got to 39degrees, I had been walking in 35+ weather all week, it was really difficult. This week we have been having that kind of weather and I have just been sitting in my office and roasting but I can’t believe I walked as much as I did that week. But I got to the day when I realised that I was going to run out of water, I was trying to pace myself with the water, but I realised that I didn’t have enough, so I was like: what do I do? I got to the point where if I turned back I was going to be walking the same amount as I would to get to my destination so that didn’t make sense, but I was at a point where I couldn’t take a two-mile detour from the trail and buy some water and so I did that. That made my journey longer for that day but water is important so that is decision that I made.

Brad: And that is quite critical, I think the thing about decision-making, and one of the other things that comes out of the Antarctic explorers that we emphasise in the book is that what is most important is making the decision, you come to a decision-point, you make a decision. Procrastinating isn’t good and over-thinking it isn’t good. And with Google it is so easy nowadays to overthink decisions, I can search for the perfect house and I can search for the perfect car, I can search for the perfect relationship, I can search for everything. I will obsess about if I want to buy a new phone, which is the best phone? If I want to buy a new…anything, a house…you can analyse to the nth degree, but what the explorers were really very good at was saying we came to a decision-point and we are going to make a decision.

We know we are resilient enough, and resourceful enough, that if we made a bad decision we can correct it. We don’t know how we are going to correct it but you do know that you can correct it, there is nothing that can be thrown at you that you couldn’t figure out a way through. I mean in Antarctica you still could fall into a crevasse or die of scurvy or die from a multitude of different things and l at the same time, the other side of that coin is that you are going to persevere until it catches up with you. I think it is that combination of just making decision and making them quickly and knowing that you are not going to make maybe the best decisions or perfect decisions, how are you going to make the decision? And your water decision on your trail, do I go forward, do I go back? I have got to decide whether to make a detour– it is a decision and the more you are procrastinating the more dehydrated you can become.

Holly: Yeah. I just did this advanced bushcraft course last week and one of the things we talked about, we spent a long time talking about hypothermia, hydration and all of that and one of the things they said was: what do you do with water? Do you ration it or do you not? And most people said: ration. And they were like: no, you drink it because you can probably find a water source later down the line if you need to but the more dehydration you are the less likely you are to make good decisions. One of the first things that goes is proper decision-making so stay hydrated, drink your water, and then just look out for new water, figure out how you are going to get new water, but stay hydrated.  

Brad: That is a critical point, it is the ability to think that, sometimes what seems a rational decision is not the best decision and the rational thing, ration the water, ration the food but at the same time, once you start impairing your decision-making ability, you are really compromised. In Antarctica where it can be really cold the cold impairs your decision-making ability and some studies were done saying your brain power diminishes by 30%. Climbing to the top of Everest, people have talked about how they become very sluggish and their brain becomes very sluggish in the high altitude and the cold and so you have got to make good decisions as you go and consume food and water.

Holly: I was really struck with that guy who ended up on his own, going back to base camp, and he had I think like three biscuits and a small piece of chocolate for like three days of hiking!

Brad: That was an absolutely remarkable story, that story is worth retelling just because it is the way we start the book. The book starts, it is not even a chapter, a prologue of these three guys on the ice and one of them is dying of scurvy, they have been out and gone out 750 miles and they are on the way back, it is not Shackleton or any of the people you would know from the famous [era], it not Moss or Captain Scott, or any of the famous people. It is three guys and they went out and they are on the way back, we don’t tell you what they are doing and why they are there, it is just that one of them is dying of scurvy and the other two have to decide whether to stay with him, or are they going to leave him behind? He tells them: I know I am dying, just leave me behind and they hesitate to make a decision and he turns to them and he says, “I am your commanding officer”, – which he was, of those three men he was indeed their commanding officer. He said: “I am giving you a military decision and to disobey is mutiny”. So now what do you do?

Holly: Yeah.

Brad: In that case they made the decision very quickly and the long and short story of all of that was that they kept going and they put him on the sledge and they were pulling him along with all the supplies. Two men pulling the sledge, with their supplies, and they were almost out of food and he was very, very, near death all the time. They had been checking he could wake up, to make sure if he was not dead, and they would revive him with a little bit of brandy or something and they would keep going and eventually they got to a point where he could not go any further. And one man had to make this absolutely remarkable journey with only a couple of biscuits and some sticks of chocolate in his pocket and walk 35 miles through the snow on his own. Again, with no mechanism for heating snow to make water and it was literally do or die, it was unbelievable.  

Holly: That’s…yeah, these stories are remarkable. So what else can you learn from these Antarctic explorers from 100+ years ago which is applicable to our modern day lives?

Brad: I think one of the key things is about teams, we think about teams being teams that work. And I still work for the same big software company and of course we do things in teams. Everything that was done in Antarctica was done in teams. We actually, in our personal lives, we are in teams as well and our teams are not just family units they are teams of people, Holly and I are in amongst a group of authors that meet once a month and chat about our writing and the challenges of being a writer and juggling our lives and advertising our books and how to write better and achieve better results with our writing and we are part of a team.

Holly: Yep.

Brad: And that team used to meet at Piccadilly Circus every month and now we meet by Zoom but we are parts of other interesting teams. I am teams with my co-author, our editor, the book designer, so many different people who helped create this book and our next book. I am teams with other friends in America, friends in the UK, and I think it is important to see ourselves as team members. It doesn’t matter if we are not working in a corporation, to think of yourself as a team member, it gives you that sense of camaraderie, it gives you that sense of purpose. You can be a team leader, on some teams you may be a leader, you may be a follower, and I think that was important for the Antarctic explorers, but it is important in our modern lives, we are very isolated from other people right now, because of the pandemic and that sense that we can build more teams.

Holly: I think that is one of the reasons that people are struggling so much with lockdown and quarantine because they are used to being a part of teams, even if they didn’t recognise them as such, and now they are feeling very alone because they are living much more solitary lives and their teams are not clearly defined.

Brad: Exactly. You can create those teams. Just that changing your mindset and changing your language too be: hey I am part of teams. It is like we have a bunch of friends from High School and we have been close ever since and we meet up on Zoom every now and then, we trade emails, we send joke cartoons around for different things, articles that are interesting. Just being part of that team has been meaningful to me. I think for everyone searching for that meaning right now, thinking: how do we build more of these teams? I have reached out to more people that I haven’t connected to in a long time. A guy who was my roommate when I was in university. These sorts of connections—now I have a bit more time in my home life, not commuting—I have heard from so many people reconnecting with people they knew. In a sense it is team building, we don’t think of it as team building, but rekindling that, those friendships, is great.

Holly: It is and now that you are saying this I am aware of so many other areas of my life in which I have been doing this as well. I mean I quit doing interviews and guests on the podcast for about a year, and it was during lockdown that I started having guests on the show again because I felt that need to connect with people on the show in a way that I hadn’t in about a year, a year-and-a-half. So yeah it is very interesting that we are reaching out to people in new ways or rekindling old ways of connecting.

Brad: It is and I think life has changed a lot in the six months and our ability to embrace that change and come away from it thinking, actually, some things are worse by a long shot, but some things are better in an interesting way. I think this connection is interesting. Even in the Antarctic community, just like in the author group, we meet once a month, there would be Antarctic meetings in London where you would get like-minded people together for talks and that would happen at the RGS, there are talks every Monday evening. There are Antarctic groups that meet every since months for dinner at Dulwich College, Dulwich College is a High School that Shackleton went to and there would be a talk and a dinner for that, that can’t happen now. The thing is these types of things start moving to Zoom and you end up with an audience that was primarily London-based or UK-based and now you have got an international based audience attending. All of a sudden you have got this whole different dynamic, an event that could be attending by 50 people can now be attended by 1000 people. It has got a very different dynamic and that is quite exciting and invigorating.

Holly: Yeah it absolutely is. One of the things that you mentioned that you are really fascinated about is how people make decisions, so how do people make decisions? And how can we learn to make better decisions?

Brad: This is an interesting and challenging area, because we actually make decisions all the time, we make small decisions and big decisions. Whether it is, what email am I going to look at next, is a decision versus what car I am going to buy next. So you have got these big decisions and these smaller decisions and I think it is weighing up decisions. Making decisions quickly is key to it, it is looking at when you make a bad decision not beating yourself up for it but learning from it.

Holly: Yes!

Brad: How did I lead to that decision and why did I make it? Being like: okay, that was an interesting decision, what can I do better next time from that? It is not easy. I am not a great decision-maker myself, I read about other authors who write about decision-makers and they are the same, no one is a perfect decision-maker.

Holly: No, absolutely.

Brad: You can look at people like any of the successful entrepreneurs and they are not perfect decision-makers, if they are honest in their autobiographies, some are and some aren’t. The ones that are honest will tell you all of the mistakes that they have made, all of the challenges along the way.

Holly: I find that a lot of people, when they read my books, that is one of the things that they compliment me on is sharing the inner journey and how difficult it is for me even when I am just walking 100-mile-trail and not going to the South Pole!

Brad: I love your stories. I have read tons of books about Everest and mountain climbing, my original idea for this book was going to be both mountain climbing and the Antarctic. And my co-author said: no, let’s just do Antarctica—and we may one day do a book on mountain climbing. I have read lots of stories from the Antarctic, different places, and your story of 100-mile walk in the South Downs is as thrilling and exciting as any of those.

Holly: Thank you.

Brad: It is because you reveal so much of yourself in that and the self-doubt and the questioning why am I doing this and what am I getting out of this? And how do I deal with the challenges of this? It is one thing when you read about a guy who has been training for about three years, is in peak physical condition and has climbed 15 different mountains and is now going to tackle Everest. That is a different sort of person to the person who is going to tackle going from being a day walker to a seven-to-ten day walker staying in bed and breakfast. It is still a journey and it is still a challenge. And the more we put ourselves out of our comfort zone is that ability to get your decision-making to be better.

There is no easy answer to how to make better decisions than trying not to beat yourself up when you make a bad one. It is decision-paralysis. Don’t tie yourself up, I made a bad decision, I bought a used car when I was quite a lot younger, when I was living in America, I bought a used care and I bought it at dusk and it was probably one of the dumbest things that you can do is to buy a car without really examining it in the daylight, it was pretty rusted out. My girlfriend at the time said: just stop obsessing about it, nickname your car “Rusty”. The car lasted for three years, I sold it on to somebody else, a friend of mine actually, it lasted for them for three years and it was always rusty. You can make a joke out of it and find a sense of humour from having made a bad decision.

Holly: I think that is the thing, I think a lot of people beat themselves up over making bad decisions and then get stuck in that in a loop of self-hatred without learning from the situation. I remember this one time getting into this discussion with someone online, it was this online forum, where she explained this bad day that she had where she had literally made a series of bad decisions, there were so many points where she could have gotten things on track, but she just kept making bad decisions. {laughing} And so I said to her: stop feeling bad about it, just learn from it, what can you learn from it? At this point you could have done this, or you could have done that, that would have turned things around. At this next point you could have done this or you could have done that… She couldn’t see it and this other woman popped into the conversation and said: stop trying to make her feel bad. And I was like: on the contrary, I am not trying to make her feel bad, I am trying to make her feel better because you can make better decisions next time and they couldn’t get it.

And I was so confused, how could someone possibly think that I was trying to make her feel bad and it wasn’t until later that I learned the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. Some people believe that they can learn from their mistakes and make their life better and some people just believe they are stuck, they are what they are and they can’t improve, and that is just heartbreaking to me that some people have that mindset.

Brad: Exactly, but the trick I think, looking for that third option, is looking to say: maybe it wasn’t such a bad decision after all. With the care decision, it didn’t turn out to be such a bad decision, it was a nice car, it just wasn’t rust proofed properly and the doors were rusting but the engine function was fine and the car was fine. It is looking at decisions and thinking, I will use that as a learning experience and I will move forward and just try to do better next time. But you won’t do better next time, the reality is you can’t do better next time, it is like people trying to second guess the stock market. You can’t guess the stock market, you can’t be like: oh I should have bought Apple stock fifteen years ago. Or those people who bought Apple stock ten years ago and held it for a year are going to beat themselves up and think, oh I should have held it longer. It is like, those are just decisions, you can’t dwell on them.

Again, it goes back to the explorers, put one foot in front of the next, you will come to more decision points and make more decisions and hopefully better decisions but you will never make perfect decisions. I think that, I think for people getting out of this mindset that you can make perfect decisions and you never know the outcome of a decision.

I think this is one of the great lessons again that came out of the explorers, they were doing scientific analysis 100 years ago and had no idea of the  implications of that analysis that they were doing but that serves today as the base line for climate change research and in fact what we are doing with some of their research, we are taking some of their samples in the natural history museum in London and we are using modern scientific apparatus to analyse samples that they took back 100 years ago. And they had no idea what they were doing, they knew they were taking back scientific samples but they had no idea of the ramifications, of the importance of having a baseline for climate change and people are constantly going back to their data. Being like: what did Shackleton and Scott discover and what were conditions like, wind conditions, the zoology, the meteorology at that time.

Holly: How can we use our own outdoor adventures, however big or small, to learn how to make better decisions in life?

Brad: I think it is being very aware, and I have got this from your books, I have now read two of your books, the book about trees, I am just in the process of reading the book about trees, I have read the South Downs book, I have listened to your podcast. Being outside and connecting with nature becomes critical and when that nature is a bunch of snow and ice and glaciers and mountains and not a lot else or whether it is the beautiful woods of Surrey and the habitats of the hills and valleys and streams of England. It is connecting with nature and feeling part of it.

Holly: Yeah and being aware of the decisions that we make. As you said no matter how big or small your adventure you have always got decisions to make: do I go this way, do I go that way? Do I do this trail, do I do that trail? What do I take with me? What kind of food? How much water? There are so many decisions in a modern day outdoor adventure, whether it is a day hike, or a weekend backpacking trip, our decisions will affect us.

Brad: The first time I went to Antarctica I was absolutely petrified. I was trying to do it the tamest way one could possibly do it, I was going on an expedition and cruise ship. It was like, I have got to get myself down to Argentina and get myself onto this ship, but I was going to be fed, I was not going to be climbing mountains and pulling my own supplies. I was not going to be doing anything like that, but I was petrified, would I be cold? Would I be seasick? Do I have the right gear? There are so many decisions in the process. A lot of this just takes research and talking with people and I made some good decisions and some bad decisions but it was quite thrilling to be there.  

Holly: So tell us a little bit more about your trip, that was late last year wasn’t it?

Brad: It was, I spent almost all of November in Antarctica, we went from the South of South America to the Falkland Islands and then to South Georgia which is an island very famous because that is where Shackleton was based before he set sail for Antarctica on his second major expedition, where his goal with that was to cross Antarctica, to set down a team of men and go walk right across continental Antarctica in 1914. At that point their ship got crushed in the ice as it sailed down but, it is a long story, they eventually tried to rescue the men, they ended up with 22 of the men staying on an Island called Elephant Island and we went to visit that island—we couldn’t set foot on it, we were able to dock the boat very near it and go off on zodiac boats around Elephant Island. It really, literally, is a big rock in the middle of nowhere.

Then the ship sailed down to the Antarctic peninsular which is a part of Antarctica which juts out of South America. We went to various islands and various part of lands around that vicinity, stunning scenery. We didn’t have great weather but we had stunning scenery and amazing animals, seals and penguins, I am not a big penguin fan but they are just so much fun to watch and I became more of penguin fan although that wasn’t my purpose for going. But it is just the most unbelievable scenery. Obviously the ships aren’t going now and there were limited numbers of people who could go each year and they say there are more people who attend a Super Bowl game in America, and a Super Bowl stadium may hold a 100,00 people, maybe each year 50,000 people go to Antarctica.

Holly: Oh wow.

Brad: So it is very few and so I feel very privileged to have done this and I am heading back in 2022.

Holly: How exciting.

Brad: So there is a lot to see and a lot to do and also being aware that the climate change impact is very visible, the habitats for the animals are challenged. We travel 3700 nautical miles, it is stunning, absolutely stunning scenery.

Holly: I love it, I would love to go there, twelve or fifteen years ago someone invited me to go on a scientific research boat to Antarctica and I just couldn’t fit it into my life at the time and I have always regretted it and it is on the list of things that I want to do because I love the idea of going to such a remote part of the world.

Brad: It is certainly remote and in 20 days we never saw another ship, we almost saw no humans, there was only one part that was inhabited, once we had left the Falkland Islands, which is inhabited, then the only time we ever saw other human beings was at one abandoned whaling station in South Georgia which is now set up as a museum and that was it. The interesting thing is, you don’t see a lot of plastic in the ocean, because the plastics and one or two feet below the surface and beyond. And so you think it is going to be really horrendous because you are going to see all this pollution and you don’t, but you are very aware that it is there and you are very aware of your own presence is impacting climate change as well and we all felt very guilty about that but at the same time for me part of the purpose of my book and everything is to bring awareness to the great excitement of Antarctica and the value of it and keeping people aware that the climate is going to dramatically change everything about it.

Holly: Absolutely, things are changing in the frozen parts of the world. So how do you think your own decision-making has improved since you wrote this book?

Brad: I make as good and bad decisions as always, I think the main thing is using some of the strategies, it is thinking of myself as part of teams, it is trying to focus on the present—some people are very past focussed and I am very future focussed. I don’t know which you are Holly, it is hard to tell from your writing? It is hard to get away from focussing on what is going to happen in the future and focus more on what is going to happen in the present.

Holly: Yeah, it is tough, it is a tough balance for me.

Brad: One of the great lessons from all this is never ever giving up. I think a phrase we used in the book is never ever give up trying and it is not saying that you need to achieve your goal, as we said Shackleton turned away from his goal, because he wanted to live. The thing is: keep trying, keep trying, keep trying but when you can’t achieve that goal look for other ways and other things to keep trying. Think: okay I am going to park that goal and try something else and just keep moving forward. I am definitely not a perfect decision-maker.

Holly: Yeah, I think keep trying, that is so important. If something isn’t working try something new, try something different. I was just talking to a friend the other day and she was saying how someone had praised her because she is on the verge of achieving this goal that she has been working towards for the last seven years of her life and someone said: good for you for not giving up on your goals, I always give up. It is like: can you imagine if you had given up a year ago, five years, six months ago and not kept trying? Sometimes goals aren’t achieved in the timeline that you want to achieve them, sometimes it takes longer, and if it is that important just keep trying.

Brad: Yes, absolutely, I think that is one of the great, great, lessons of the whole thing, they just kept persevering. They were fluid, they worked well together, they accepted that physical hardship is part of life, that it is not always going to be easy. We are living in a time where it is psychologically challenging. Right now I am not sitting there worrying about where my next meal is coming from but I worry about things like if I go and put out my recycling and is a runner going to run by me shedding the virus. We live in a world now that has dangers and risks and that does exist and I will protect myself as much as I possibly can but at the same time it is a world of risk and danger and just being psychologically strong about that.

Holly: How do you recommend that people keep their spirits up when they are trying and failing and trying and failing and they are on this long road towards their goal. I think that was one of the important things that the Antarctic explorers always managed to keep their spirits up in the most horrible conditions. So how can we do that today?

Brad: I think it is about seeking inspiration and inspiration doesn’t necessarily come from television. And I love television there are lots of shows and films I will watch. I think it quite honestly comes more from books, more from talking with people, more from ideas, more from songs, form poetry, from music. I think we can, it is easy to be passive when watching television. You can sit there and your brain can just take in and you are relaxing and having fun. If there is something different and engaging about audio books, real books, printed books, ebooks, about music, there is something about that causes people to think differently.

Holly: I agree.

Brad: I am listening to an audiobook about Leonardo Da Vinci, it is absolutely wonderful, he is just about the most remarkable human being probably that ever lived, ever. And it is seventeen hours and yet at the same time it is about this one guy but it is so inspiring. And you think about all the different ways he looked at life and nature and come away and now I look at life and nature differently because of that. But absorbing as audio book is totally different to I think absorbing it as a film, had it been a two-or-three hour documentary.

Holly: Mm absolutely, absolutely. It is in the room with you in the way that film and television isn’t.

Brad: And podcasts as well. I have been listening to your podcast and there is so much insight, your individual ones, the one where you are interviewing people, the ones where you are looking at a challenge people have, how do I deal with all the different topics you deal with, friends, relationships, nature, about feeling down, about dealing with adversity, challenges, about life in general and there are so many wonderful insights.

Holly: Thank you. Well I also wanted to thank you for joining us today. I am mindful of time, I could probably keep talking to you all day but we all have things to do. So where can people find you online? Where can people find your book? Where can they learn more about you?

Brad: My website is http://extreme-decisions.com and the book is available on Amazon, it is in print in Kindle format, it is an audio book and I have to say that the audio book is read by Dennis Kleinman, he was born in South Africa, he grew up partly in England, America, he has this very international voice, I sought someone who might have sounded like the early Antarctic explorers might have sounded like and that is Dennis.   He has this rough, gravely, deep, male voice and it is just absolutely wonderful. If you get a chance to try the audio book it is only five hours long and Dennis is just the most remarkable voice and we were finalists in the voice arts awards and went to Hollywood and were at an event with Sigourney Weaver and we didn’t win in that category for non-fiction but it was just the most thrilling event and it was all because of Dennis’s narration.

Holly: Yeah he is spectacular.

Brad: I would recommend that, check it out on Amazon please and reach out to me via my website, I look forward to having feedback and comments. I am available on LinkedIn and on Twitter, it is @polardecisions.

Holly: Oh I like that!

Brad: But I am not often on Twitter, I am more often on LinkedIn.

Holly: All right, so thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your insights, I think decision-making is something that the more we are aware of how we make decisions, the better decisions we will make. So thank you.

Brad: Thank you very much Holly, I really, really, enjoyed being on your show and it is a great honour and privilege to be here.

Holly: Thank you for listening, please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of this week’s episode, you can email me at: [email protected] or you can find me online and get in touch there. I would really love to hear from you. Thank you so much for listening, if you enjoyed this episode please leave a quick review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/370 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you.