[shark]

I'm not motivated to do lots of routes I know I can do

In all honesty, I just don't understand this!

If the outcome is all but inevitable where's the challenge ? Its nice to climb lots of routes but ultimately projecting routes which are harder than I've done before is what has always driven me.

Routes come and go.
A BM feat lasts forever.

 

[Three Nine]

The challenge can also be doing a lot or doing them quickly.

For example, if you set yourself the goal of doing 10 7b+s in a day, I imagine you might find this quite a challenge and the result far from inevitable. For me this would be both a) challenging and b) much more fun than thrashing myself for years on end on the same route.

[shark]

Each to their own

[tomtom]

I too enjoy thrashing away at something I can't do for ages. makes it all the better when you get it done. Sometimes I'm glad not to succeed as it gives me a reason to come back and try again. That may sound a bit weird, but it's how I feel often..

[Sasquatch]

I swing both ways 

I love the emotional rollercoaster of long-term projects, but also love the joy of doing lots of new stuff.  Generally  if the question is between working a project I haven't done vs. repeating lots of stuff I've already done, I'll pick the project. 

[cheque]

I swing both ways 

Me too, depending on the type of climbing.

With trad I have to force myself to try stuff that's hard for me 'cos I enjoy onsighting stuff that's within my limits so much. I suppose this is helped by being relatively new to climbing- there are classics at pretty much every crag I visit that I haven't done.

Sport and bouldering is the opposite- I can't be bothered climbing things that I'm unlikely to struggle on apart from as a warm-up, particularly boulder problems, and it was only when I started siegeing things that these two disciplines started appealing to me.

[Sasquatch]

Sport and bouldering is the opposite- I can't be bothered climbing things that I'm unlikely to struggle on apart from as a warm-up, particularly boulder problems, and it was only when I started siegeing things that these two disciplines started appealing to me.

For me it all boils down to whether I've done climbed it before or not.  I don't care too much about the grade, but I like to climb EVERYTHING.  Once I've done it, the motivation to climb it again goes WAY down. 

Locally, that limits my options considerably to either bouldering projects or pretty adventurous trad stuff, which doesn't work well schedulewise for me.  Trips are interesting for me that way as I rarely project things for more than a few goes as I want to try other stuff.  On any given bouldering trip, I'll generally climb 50-100 problems in 5 days of climbing.

[nai]

thing I find odd is that you throw so much of yourself into a long term project, you spend time away from it thinking about how you might do it differently, planning when you might be able to get back to it, training for it, go to sleep at night running through the sequence, etc.  And then you do it and that's it, it's done - whether over months, years or decades, you've poured hours of physical and emotional effort into something and you walk/skip/float away knowing you will never touch those holds, try those moves, maybe even go to that crag again. Not really on topic I guess but like I say, I find it odd.

[Sasquatch]

thing I find odd is that you throw so much of yourself into a long term project, you spend time away from it thinking about how you might do it differently, planning when you might be able to get back to it, training for it, go to sleep at night running through the sequence, etc.  And then you do it and that's it, it's done - whether over months, years or decades, you've poured hours of physical and emotional effort into something and you walk/skip/float away knowing you will never touch those holds, try those moves, maybe even go to that crag again. Not really on topic I guess but like I say, I find it odd.

It's all about the journey, not the destination.