Here at last is the final part of our series, Lessons from Defensive Driving. I hope you enjoyed the ride.

Rule #50: Connect Your Mind To Your Eyes
Have you ever had one of those days when you suddenly jerk awake in your office chair and realize you had no idea how you got there? Try as you might, the commute is a blank. Scary, isn't it? Where WERE you during the drive?

Autopilot has its good and bad points -- the deciding factor of whether it is good or bad is awareness. See what you're looking at. Think, don't just watch. For example, when you find that you're low on gas, gas stations pop up in the forefront of your consciousness. You won't be able to help it. You'll be on the alert for gas stations at every corner -- and then you might forget you need to get some milk.

See what you want, but don't lose sight of what's happening. That's how accidents can happen.

"One of the most important aspects of defensive driving is recognizing impending hazards BEFORE they become a problem for you. Early recognition allows the time you need to avoid trouble." The root of the work recognition comes from cognate - to know. Knowledge, in it's most basic sense, IS awareness.

Thought the series was finished last week, didn't you? Well, we do have one more part to go after this, and then it'll be done. In the meantime, I strongly encourage you to continue reading uncle Bob's 70 Rules for Defensive Driving as well. You never know, the life you save can be your own.

Rule #31: Avoid Head-On Collisions
I've underlined the key words from certain sentences in this rule:

Anticipate, pay attention, look far ahead. Filter out the distractions. It's about taking control by merging your planning skills with the power of your imagination, supporting that by experience, and fueling everything with a dash of fear to keep you alert.

Think ahead. Prepare. By practicing your decision-making skills in non-stressful situations, you can refine them and enforce good habits that will support you in harsher times, or even save you under pressure. This is where imagination and fear can help you the most -- instead of fearing the worst, go ahead and imagine the worst-case scenarios -- and prepare for them as well.

Rule #38: Don't Prevent Others from Passing
There's enough business out there on the internet to help support your small enterprise, especially if you've already found your niche. You don't have to resort to mud-slinging, underhanded or unethical practices just to get yours. On the internet, you ARE your reputation, and gossip --once out-- lives forever. Act with integrity, focus your energy on quality products or services, and them promote the heck out of them. Besides, your competitors today may be your partners tomorrow. You never know, you know?

Here I am again with another batch of Uncle Bob's safer-driving tips, as applied to your own business. Enjoy!

Rule #25: Maintain Your Tires
Really, you have to click the link first to understand the framework for this. It's also very good advice.

When you're in business for yourself, you work to save money, as well as make it. Don't believe me? Think about it. Whether you're just starting out, or maybe taking over, you need to keep your overhead down to keep some money in the cash box. Sometimes, you have to operate on a shoe-string for quite a long while, treading water, before you get to see any profit.

(Note: For excellent advice on getting by with little money for your business, go download Seth Godin's manifesto, The Bootstrapper's Bible, at ChangeThis.)

Hey everyone,

we're releasing a small update to JEM to fix a few minor bugs from the last release. There really is no major features added to this update, but it does address some important bugs, so we recommend updating your copy of JEM to this new version.

Although this is primarily a bug fix update, a few little options have been added, but nothing too fancy.. :-D

• support for no folder name affiliate links, like http://www.domain.com/username. By default, the regular affiliate links in JEM had to have a folder name to it, like http://www.jrox.com/go/ryan , but this update will allow you to have links like http://www.jrox.com/ryan instead.
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Here are more lessons I got from Uncle Bob's safer-driving tips.

Rule #17: Know Your Blind Spots
More commonly touted as, "Know what you don't know," knowing that you have blind spots -- don't worry, everyone has them-- is only the first step. Blind spots happen when you're too close to the situation to see things clearly. They also pop up in situations you don't want to deal with. The results? You get -- stop me if you've heard this one before -- blind-sided. So, how to deal?

Awareness is important, and a willingness to listen to viewpoints other  than your own. You can start dealing with your blind spots by asking someone you trust and whose opinion you respect (and hopefully is also diplomatic) to point them out to you. Ideally, this should be done in a calm, neutral setting. As in rule number 14, nobody likes being ambushed, even if in this case you ask for it.

After I stumbled on Bob Saller's "70 Rules of Defensive Driving" on Roadtrip America, I was hit by a totally random thunderbolt of inspiration, and immediately thought of how to apply some of them in running a business. 

Note: Here's just my free and on-the-fly interpretation, I picked the rules that rung a bell. Visit the site yourself to see all 70 of Uncle Bob's life-saving rules for the road, and to get the real background, click on the links below to see the actual rule I'm referring to. Ready?

Rule #10: Drive Precisely
Precise is neat, exact, meticulous.  Being precise means executing an action according to something, fitting something -- a plan, a destination, a specific goal. Precise is the opposite of sloppy. If you've suffered the embarrassment of having a half-baked job come back to haunt you, you'd know how things like expediency may sneak you through, but taking short-cuts avoids the lessons, the mastery you could have earned, e.g. learning to do it right the first few times vs. doing fast to get it done in one go.

Rule #11: Chill Out
Relax, de-stress, literally take a load off and put your feet up (Sitting all day is bad for your health) or pound the pavement (Exercise helps. A lot). Stop clenching, it's bad for your teeth. And your blood pressure. Take a deep breath, then a few more. It's attitude. It's the journey, not the destination. It's you, choosing to be in control, not you allowing your emotions to rule the roost.

Aside from taking his place in history as an industrial titan, Henry Ford left a lot of inspiring quotes, as well as an enduring legacy.

• "It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste."
• "There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something."

We all have dreams and plans for what we want in life, and how we want ours to turn out, but not all of us are putting ourselves out there -- working and hustling to make our plans bear fruit, or turn our dreams into reality. I know this. You know this. Doubtless we've all had grand plans that we drew up, all excited and eager, only to have them quietly die on paper, stillborn.

It goes like this: we're intelligent enough and glib enough to come up with at least 3 reasons off-the-cuff on why it a) never happened, b)  would never have worked out and/or c)  was doomed to fail. We 're crazy-smart that way.

(This post was inspired by Trent Hamm's -- of The Simple Dollar-- "What's Coming Next" post here, and another post by Philip Brewer --on Wisebread -- here, on contingency planning.)

We are the only beings who can also live backwards and forwards. Living backwards is memory, living forward is day-dreaming.

• Looking back, have you ever thought that you'd be where you are right now, when you were younger?
• If that sentence wasn't confusing enough -- have you ever thought you'd be at this point in your life, ever, or at all?

When you get the answers, here's the next question, you just fill in the blanks:

• If anyone ever said to me (pick a number) years ago I'd be (doing what you're doing now) I'd have (done something that showed my explicit yet polite disbelief to the person or persons in question).

When you sit down, put your feet up and turn on the TV to shuffle through the channels...click-click-click, how often do you ever wonder, "What's up?" -- only to hear the voice-over tell you, in a deep, gravelly voice, the name of the next show.

Living your life on purpose is a little like that.

Let me explain:

TV movie channels can tell you what you can look forward to watching in the next week, in the next 24 hours. They can also tease you with what to expect in the next month. As a viewer, the former gives you the advance notification of what's coming... you can choose which programs you want, as well as know the times those programs are available, and when they'll show, easy as pie. You can arrange your time to fit in what you want to watch when it's convenient. The latter lets you anticipate what's coming, and keeps you going because you have something to look forward to.

What you don't see going on behind the scenes were the months of planning ahead, the people hammering out licensing and broadcast agreements per region, settling conflicts with other upcoming events --like the Oscars or the Superbowl, and figuring out the best times to release films to the audience. For example, when releasing a multi-part movie series, the first parts get continuous replay on cable, just around the time the next part is to be released in theaters, right? It's the build up before the storm breaks, so to speak.  (Note: This isn't even taking into consideration the actual work that went into the films and shows themselves.)

Chris Guillebeau (of the popular blog The Art of Nonconformity) guest-wrote for ZenHabits early this month, and shared his thoughts on how he made his "very small business" succeed.

His advice in that post isn't for everyone. After all, it's mainly for --and from -- the sole proprietor running a one-man business, and a deliberately small one, at that. But the outpouring of support he's built up from the quality of his work (he has thousands of fans and followers on his social media network) shows that he has a truly inspirational approach to life.

Guillebeau's goal was, and still is, "to make a good living without simply creating a job for (him)self." He's been doing so for over ten years. What follows are some issues that rose after reading his post.

1. Hire no one. If your business can get by with just you at the helm, ok. Some professions lend themselves to one-man operations. There are free-lance writers and CPA's, for example. It's also an enormous help if a) you're the type to go it alone and enjoy it, and b) you've got the stamina for dealing with the requirements of the business, i.e, being the Chief Bottle-washer as well as the CFO/CEO/tech support, etc. --for as long as you want the business to succeed. And that can take a long time. Even Chris admits it can get tiring, as he explained in this post.