Don't Waste Your Setbacks

I was driving my family down to Maryland for a little vacation at a certain wolf-themed water park. When we were about 30 minutes from our destination, we hit near-standstill traffic. We crawled along for a while and were coming up to an exit. I thought I was supposed to stay on the interstate, but one of my kids pointed out, "Dad! Google says to get off here!"

So I quickly shifted lanes, took the off-ramp, and followed the next directions… to drive to the next stoplight, make a U-turn, and get back on the highway.

The heck? The estimated arrival time didn't change at all, so no harm, no foul. Maybe the GPS thought it was saving time by routing me around some of the traffic jam.

But when I tried to get back on the highway, I couldn't. There was construction and I couldn't turn left. The GPS re-routed and sent me further down the road to make another U-turn. [groan] It only added a couple minutes to the ETA, though. Again, no harm, no foul.

I got turned around, drove back toward the highway, and pulled onto the on-ramp… BUT IT WAS PUTTING ME ON THE HIGHWAY HEADED IN THE WRONG DIRECTION. The southbound ramp was completely closed.

The ETA on Google Maps nearly doubled. I was going to have to drive to the next exit, turn around, and go all the way to the back of the traffic jam and start the slog all over again.

I wanted to break something. I wanted to say words I didn't want my kids to hear . But I'm kinda like a role model to them or something, so I took a deep breath and said "at least we're not in a rush to be somewhere by a certain time" (or something else I didn't fully believe at the moment) and drove on with gritted teeth.

After a few minutes, though, my jaw loosened up as my wife struck up a conversation. And we had a good talk. I don't remember exactly what it was about, but at least we weren’t grumbling and stewing. The boys were chill. We had good music playing. The time passed rather quickly. There was still some residual frustration, and I silently drafted a snarky email in my head that I'd never actually send to the Google Maps team. But what initially felt like an absolute disaster turned out to be just a mild inconvenience, and I honestly didn't mind having a little extra time in the car with my family.

When we got to the resort, we were able to check in to our room right away. Would we have been able to do that if we'd arrived earlier? I don't know. There doesn't have to be an immediately perceivable "good" thing that results from dealing with a "bad" thing. But I do trust there's usually a reason things happen the way they do. And we can always choose to use a setback as a learning experience and look for silver linings.

In this case, I was given a bonus opportunity to develop my patience and show my kids that an inconvenience doesn't have to ruin your day. I also gained wisdom. When we came back to that cursed exit ramp a second time, Google Maps told me to do the same thing again. Now I knew better. I also had 25 extra minutes to talk and reflect on some things with my wife that I wouldn't have otherwise. And I got a great illustration to use for this week's newsletter.

Setbacks like this happen all the time in life and work. The app quits unexpectedly and you lose your files. You spend half a day troubleshooting an issue and still can't get it to work. The client doesn't like any of your proposed options and wants to go in a completely different direction. It feels like wasted time, and now you have to start all over again. But your setbacks don't have to go to waste.

If you've ever learned a musical instrument, playing the same song over and over again isn't a waste of time. That's called practice, and it makes you better.

When you're forced to reopen the app and start from scratch, is there something you'd do differently this time? Are you more familiar with the process now? Can you work more efficiently?

After all that time troubleshooting, maybe you didn't find the solution, but you ruled out a bunch of things that don't work, and you're a lot more knowledgeable about the system than you were before it broke.

Maybe you didn't win the contract, but you connected with someone and showed them what you're capable of. Maybe they will keep you in mind for a future project, or refer you to someone else.

These might seem like poor consolation prizes compared to things going your way. But they're something. And sometimes a small setback does lead to a much bigger opportunity than you ever could have imagined.

How things ultimately play out is mostly out of our hands. But we have a lot of control over how we view our setbacks and how we move forward from them.