“Ride or die?”

Yours Truly, commuting.

I fell off my bicycle right between a bus and a rickshaw, just as traffic started to move.

I only got a few scrapes, but it was scary. And I rode on. And again the next day.

Sometimes, moving forward is safer than staying still–and the only way to get where you want to go.

I had about a mile from my house to the office, along an artery road in a city of 20 million. Sometimes, the commute took 10 minutes by bicycle. Sometimes, it was 45 minutes. I was an aggressive minnow among the buses, cars, rickshaws, and motorbikes.

I hadn’t always been a cyclist. At first, I’d negotiated a rickshaw fare each morning. Starting the day with a stressful negotiation, and taking a long ride to the office on side roads, wasn’t sustainable. I needed a bike to cut through traffic.

My first day on a bike in Dhaka, I realized I needed to be more aggressive. For safety. People expected me to move into tiny gaps in traffic, but I was hesitating, and blocking the dance. That was a good way to get hit by someone, or cause an accident for someone else.

I needed to shorten my commute. Bicycling increased my risk, but to shorten my commute it was a risk I had to take–so I did. And I quickly learned how to reduce the risks. I learned to:

• Look at the flow of traffic ahead

• Claim my place in the flow

• Recover quickly

• Buy some cycling gloves

In life or in business, risk is sometimes unavoidable. Unless you give up and go home. But it helps to know where you’re trying to go.

Through Common Thriving, I help small-business owners see clearly:

• where they are 

• where they want to be

• what they need to do next. 

And how to deal with the details, risks, and rewards of doing what’s next. Sign up for the Light Stretches newsletter for an idea and an action step to grow a bit each Friday