Productivity

Life Is a Road Trip, Not a Drag Race

When to stop and enjoy the view

You’ve been burning the candle at both ends chasing those goals, haven’t you? I know what it’s like. When I get into something that inspires me, I become a machine.

Eventually, though, I crash and burn on the side of the road. It’s epic when it happens, often involving bar hopping and binge-watching Netflix until I forget what I even wanted out of this life.

Everything that burns will eventually burn out.

There is life between those extremes — a middle road between hustle and burnout. It’s important to find this road because everything that burns will eventually burn out.

When you find that road, don’t drag race on it. Treat it as a neverending road trip. You reach one milestone, take a break to fill up on fuel, then continue onto another one.

Stop and smell the roses? Are you serious?

I can hear you screaming at me:

There’s no stopping! I only have one life and I’m wasting time. I need to hustle hard and get after it!

Let’s not get it twisted; the hustle is important. Sometimes, to get to the next town on your trip, you need to drive all night. But you can’t maintain that pace forever.

If you only stop for quick fill-ups and naps, you’ll miss important things, like oil changes.

We have a finite amount of energy. When you hustle hard every day, drag racing to that next goal, you burnout, and it takes you too long to get to that next goal.

Enjoying the view is not a waste of time

You are not losing time or falling behind if you stand still for a little while. You earned that view. Take a moment to enjoy it. Otherwise, what was the point of all that hard work?

This is often a problem with how we formulate our goals. Focusing on actions is crucial, but you also need to know where the peak of the mountain your climbing is. Why do you want it? What will you do when you get there?

Not stopping is like taking a trip to Disneyland and turning around when you arrive because you have someplace else to be.

Balancing hustle and time off

I’ve been studying a lot of Taoism lately, and they have an interesting concept know as “the middle way”.

Followers of the middle way strive to find balance in all things. They can strive to achieve goals, sure, but there is an equal and opposite reaction for every action. Burn all night, burnout tomorrow.

The key is to balance these reactions.

Work hard — hustle — but long before the burnout sets in, take a break. Following the concept of the road trip over drag racing can help with this.

Imagine you’re life is a slow road trip from one end of the United States to the other (and back again, if you’re lucky enough to live that long). If all you do is focus on getting from Maine to Disneyland, you’ll miss all the wonderous places, views, and people along the way. A better way, a more balanced way, would be to keep Disneyland in mind but set your first goal to just before you will run out of gas.

I don’t know about your car, but mine tells me how many miles I can get for each tank of gas, usually about 350. Before I set out from Bangor, Maine, I would find an interesting place on the map somewhere between 200 and 300 miles away and make that my first goal.

Here’s the important part: when you get there, don’t just fill up and leave. Stick around and enjoy whatever it was that you found interesting about it.

This is the way to enjoy the journey.

How do you know when it’s time to get back on the road?

Some people have difficulty making stops along their path; they get anxious about getting back on the road and striving for the next goal. So here’s a way to be confident that you haven’t left your journey behind by stopping for too long:

At some point, while you are enjoying the fruits of reaching this quick milestone, wanderlust will set in, and a new milestone will become obvious to you.

That’s when it’s time to get back on the road, back to your hustle.