“Not only the main problem but its details absorbed him. Food, how to get it, how to eke out our slender stock of preserved food to give the greatest variety to the eternal seal. How to keep everyone employed & cheerful, to keep sleeping bags dry, to nip any sign of pessimism in the bud, the best way of keeping the stores ready for an instant shift, all these things & many more occupied his thoughts by day & most of the night.”
Reginald James - physicist, Endurance
"How to keep everyone employed & cheerful."
Reginald James was one of Shackleton's tent-mates on the ice. He had a birds-eye view for how hard Shackleton worked at keeping up morale.
Suggestions on how to keep up morale from a Shackleton's Way workshop:
1. Send Thank You emails / newsletters.
2. Recognize attendance and daily contributions - not just the big stuff.
3. Celebrate and share successes with others.
A lot of people struggling with being confined in self isolation in the COVID19 emergency at the current time. Here are my tips that might help, from my experience of spending a couple of winters in Antarctica sharing a very small base (New Zealand's Scott Base) with just a handful of others:
1) Good meals are the single biggest key to a successful winter-over team (this, and many of the other tips here are also recommended by the psychologists who briefed us before we journeyed to the ice by the way). Cook something. Order in those healthy kitset meals and make them up. Treat yourself to an Uber Eats (don't worry about the cost for now if you can at…