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Hi, it’s Pat! 👋
There are a lot of business and life quotes that involve roads.
You have “The road to success is always under construction,” or, “It’s a long road, but it’s worth it,” and then there’s the classic, “Difficult roads lead to beautiful destinations.”
Quotes are cool, but they usually leave us hanging with no direction or actual strategy.
Today, I’m going to introduce a metaphor involving a different part of a road. It’s something most people never even think about, but it’s been the key to saving countless lives, and could potentially save yours, too.
Any guesses?
Read on, and let’s get unstuck.
“There are a lot of business and life quotes that involve roads.”
— Pat Flynn, from today in this newsletter
I had just finished my last exam for the semester and I had a decision to make:
1. Rest after a long week of studying and then drive back home to San Diego in the morning.
Or
2. Leave immediately, drive straight through, and get back home before midnight.
I was anxious to get home, so I chose the latter.
That decision almost ended my life.
I went to college at UC Berkeley up in northern California, and it’s about a 9 hour drive back down to my home in San Diego. I had done this drive dozens of times before with zero problems, even at night, but this time, around 9:30pm, after 7 hours of driving, I fell asleep at the wheel.
Moments later, I suddenly woke up to a loud rumbling sound that vibrated the entire car as I headed toward the guardrail. I immediately took back control of the car, pulled over, and took a deep breath.
I was still alive, and I was in shock.
If it wasn’t for the rumble strips etched onto the shoulder of the road, something terrible could have happened.
Two things I learned that night:
1. Never ever, EVER drive while tired or sleepy. Today, if I’m on the road and I start to feel tired, I exit, find a place to park, and take a 20 minute power nap.
2. Rumble strips exist.
Rumble strips, also known as sleeper lines or waker-uppers, were first rolled out in 1952 on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, and they are a cost-effective way to prevent accidents on the road.
I now know this first hand.
On the road of life (here’s where the analogy kicks in), oftentimes we’re drifting without even knowing it. Perhaps we begin to tune things out without even realizing it, and it’s important that we have our own version of rumble strips to wake us up and help us get back to where we need to be.
In my life, and in my business, I’ve added rumble strips in various kinds of ways:
These are just a few of the rumble strips I’ve set up in my life. Years ago, I even installed software on my computer to stop myself from visiting YouTube when I wasn’t supposed to, and I’ve more recently deleted TikTok.*
* That said, I’ve re-downloaded it to upload to the Team SPI TikTok account for another experiment, and I’m much more disciplined than I was once before.
Spend some time to come up with a few rumble strips of your own. Really consider what you tend to do when you start to drift off course, and what mechanisms can be put in place to help you stay on course.
Do not go through life without those boundaries in place to help you stay the course and live the best life you can.
And no matter what, do not drive while tired.
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Watched a chicken cross the road…
...it was poultry in motion.
Starting and growing a business can be hard, and sometimes you might feel stuck. Our weekly newsletter, Unstuck, gets delivered to over 100,000 people each week to help them get unstuck. We'd love to help you, too.
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