Committing to an Overland Expedition

Committing to an Overland Expedition

“Making a Go/No-Go Decision”

One of the most challenging things about pursuing long term adventure travel is making the final “go” decision. Of course, the longer the adventure, the harder it is to “pull the trigger”. In our experience, there are a couple of things to keep in mind when making your decision. First, the value of your adventures will almost always offset the cost of your adventures, even when you account for the opportunity cost of taking time off of work. Second, the older you get the harder it will be to take long term adventures, especially if they are more physically demanding adventures. And third, exploring and pursuing your dreams will likely result in changes to your lifestyle that will increase your long term happiness.

If you are still on the fence, ask yourself the following 3 questions which are loosely based on questions that Tim Ferris describes in The 4-Hour Workweek:

• If I don’t pursue this adventure, will I regret it?
• What’s the worst thing that could happen to me if I pursue this adventure?
• What is a more likely outcome? 

Most of the time, you’ll find that the answers to these questions will make it easier for you to make a “go” decision. For example, when we started dreaming about completing an overland expedition from Boulder, Colorado to the tip of Argentina, we were both working. Leah was also finishing up her graduate degree in a second career, and I was a manager at a Fortune 10 company. So going on the trip would not only mean up to 2 years of income, including the time it would take for me to find a job when I came back, but also delaying the start of Leah’s career as a psychotherapist. So we asked ourselves the three questions above. And here were our answers:

• If we don’t pursue this adventure, will we regret it? Yes, especially since I had decided against completing a similar trip through the same countries about ten years before and had always regretted not doing it.
• What’s the worst thing that could happen to us if we pursue this adventure? It could take me a while (perhaps up to a year) to find a job when we return. It could take Leah up to a year to build her practice and she would lose 2-years of experience. 
• What is a more likely outcome? It would probably only take me 6 months to find a job when we return. It would still take Leah time to build her practice, but she would gain cultural experience to bring back to her clients.