The Dilemma Zone

For most of my life, I identified as a risk-averse planner. I would carefully and cautiously take into account all of the permutations of possibility before taking any step, especially a step that seemed risky.

Sometimes, in the process of weighing all the best and worst case scenarios, I would even forget that the whole purpose of doing so was to take action. In these moments I would stay frozen in space and time, frustrated by the situation I was in but terrified of making any moves.

So, by the time I made the move to quit my job and start my own business, it’s safe to say I thought I had weighed out all of the things that could possibly go wrong. I inched up towards the leap in front of me armed with backup plans A-Z… and then another few to spare just in case.

It felt as sure as sure could be.

And then, two and a half months later, a global pandemic hit.

(Didn’t see that one coming!)

While my business survived, and is now even thriving, I often reflect back on the scary decision I made to leap in the first place. Had I known that a global pandemic was even a possibility, I don’t think I would have ever left my job in the first place. But to be honest, if I hadn’t left my job, I don’t think I would have fared the last couple of years as well as I actually did.

The point of me sharing this isn’t about what my life could have looked like if I didn’t start my business, or even what my life looks like with my business today. The point of my sharing this is to shed light on the moment where I stepped into the highly risky, highly unwieldy, highly unknown point of no return.

Or, as they would call it in traffic engineering - The Dilemma Zone.

Something that people often find fascinating is that my father is a traffic and transportation engineer. This means that when my friends openly muse about why traffic lights work the way they do or an intersection is designed a certain way, I usually have at least half an answer for them after a lifetime of crosswalk commentary in my household.

Something that I personally find fascinating about traffic engineering is that while it is a profession that depends on the accuracy of math, it is also a profession that directly deals with the intricacies of human behavior.

Streets are designed for cars, yes. But they are also designed for the drivers of those cars - and that’s where the real work comes in. Because no matter how great the algorithm is, humans will always bring the factor of unpredictability.

Nothing showcases this better than The Dilemma Zone.

I am not a traffic engineer, so my fun name for The Dilemma Zone is The Damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t Zone. No matter what you call it, here’s what it is.

The Dilemma Zone is the area of time and space leading up to a stop light where, even if you are following the law to the letter, you will essentially end up in a lose/lose situation. It occurs as the light is turning yellow.

If you stop in The Dilemma Zone, you risk causing damage to yourself, your car, or the cars behind you.

If you keep going in The Dilemma Zone, you risk getting caught in an intersection while the light turns red, therefore breaking the law.

But here’s the thing.

Even though there are engineering measures that can be taken to diminish the size of The Dilemma Zone, it can never be eradicated altogether. No matter how well an intersection is designed, the moment of risk - even if just for a millisecond - will still exist.

Why?

Well, because even within the confines of driving law, human behavior is simply too unpredictable. We all come preset with different vision capabilities, different response times, different reactions. Additionally, our individual behaviors change on a daily basis based on our moods, our sleep levels, and about a billion other factors.

So even in the very certain, very precise, very mathematically driven world of traffic engineering, there is still this gap of uncertainty.

And as I asked my father when he explained this concept to me - isn’t that how it goes in life too?

Mitigation vs. Erasure

No matter where we are trying to go in life, the road will eventually come to a point where we have to face our own version of The Dilemma Zone. You will know that you are there when the risk of staying put seems to be as much of a loss as the risk of moving forward.

In my experience, many humans try to stay put until they can absolutely guarantee that there is no risk or uncertainty ahead. Much like in traffic engineering, this is an impossible exercise.

Remember, the risk can be mitigated, but it can never be erased altogether.

Life is risky and unpredictable. Even the perfect plans and the perfect timing can quickly become swept up in the new reality of any moment.

So, if that’s the case, how do we mitigate our own personal Dilemma Zones?

Well, I would suggest that we look back to traffic engineering for the answers.

One way to mitigate The Dilemma Zone in traffic is to put sensors not just at the stop bar of an intersection, but to also place sensors leading up to the stop bar. This allows small, last minute adjustments in the traffic signal to be made.

In our lives, when it’s time to make a change, take a risk, or leap, it can be tempting to get very all or nothing. This actually makes any movement that much more risky because it places so much weight on one moment or one decision.

In reality, we have so much more ability to fine tune and adjust that we often give ourselves credit for. Turning a large decision into a series of medium or small sized experiments can create the ability for nimble pivots rather than huge course corrections. And ultimately, this can make any leap feel a bit less risky.

Finally, a big factor of mitigating The Dilemma Zone comes down to trusting the process.

Haven’t you ever been at an intersection where the traffic lights are broken? People still figure out how to make it work, even if it’s momentarily messy.

For the past decade, I lived in Miami where people have a tendency to juice every last second out of a yellow light, oftentimes meaning they are still lingering in a rush hour intersection while the light turns red. Do the other cars just plow forward full speed when their light turns green? Of course not. It’s not perfect, and it’s legally ambiguous, but most of the time, disaster doesn’t ensue.

Trusting the process when it comes to The Dilemma Zone in life is ultimately about trusting yourself. Trusting that your awareness and intelligence won’t suddenly turn off tomorrow. Trusting that you will see a huge problem if it presents itself and that you will do something about it.

Will it possibly be uncomfortable or messy? Sure. But life is uncomfortable and messy.

You’ve brought yourself this far. There’s no reason to believe you won’t be able to get yourself through whatever comes next.

Cowritten with my father, and expert all things traffic, Fayssal Husseini
www.husseinidesigngroup.com