Over the years, I've learned a very important lesson -- the ability to motivate depends a lot on whom you are trying to get to act and what you're trying to get them to do.

I'm easily motivated the minute Brad mentions anything about naptime.

He and Jeremy however are motivated the minute the word fishing or hunting is uttered.

Case in point:

Sunday morning, after working until 2:30 a.m., I got out of bed at 8:30. Brad was asleep on the couch. By 10:30, I was getting bored. I noticed that his feet were moving -- barely -- back and forth.

"Brad," I whispered in my quietest voice. "You want to go fishing?"

His feet started moving a little faster.

I waited a couple of minutes.

"Brad," I whispered, louder this time, "you wanna go fishing?"

He rolled over to his side.

I tried it one more time, again, just a little louder than the time before.

This time he sat straight up on the couch, looked at me and said, "We're going to have to find the fishing poles and the tackle box."

The entire incident took place within five minutes. Usually, when I have to wake Brad, it's a 30-minute process.

Jeremy is also a hard person to wake. It normally takes at least five knocks on his bedroom door to get him up and going.

But Sunday morning, it took two seconds after the word fishing was out of my mouth before he was out of bed and walking out of the bedroom.

We were on the road to our fishing trip within the next half hour.

If I could just find a way to use the words hunting and fishing in other aspects of our life, we'd all be getting along a lot better.

Somehow though, I doubt that hunting for painting supplies or lumber would have the same motivational factor.

And I know, without a doubt, that fishing for nails to hang the window trim is not a driving force for either of them.

Next Sunday, I'm going to try an experiment. I'll wake them up with the lure of a fishing trip first thing in the morning and about noon, I'll let them know that it's time to go home and take a nap. When we do get home, I'll "change my mind" and fish out the chop saw, hunt down the nails and scope out the hammer, then we can all dive into the window project with baited breath.

You just can't imagine how motivated I am to get this weekend started.