What is it that we enjoy about Road trips? The freedom to explore? The joys of hopping into a car and driving off into the wild blue yonder? For me, road trips symbolize freedom, they represent a mobile society with time to explore, time to see and time to experience our amazing world.

Today, millions of people hit the road day in day out across the world – sometimes just to head to another neighboring town and sometimes to cross the country. How do we help make sense of our travel plans? How do we create a plan that works and how do we make every vacation and road trip we take in the future better?

We borrow a little bit of management theory based on continuous improvement.

Plan, Do, Sense, Act

That’s right, we’re going to crack open some Demming here and borrow his “Plan Do Sense Act”.

• Plan: What is our goal, what are some of our objects, where do you want to be? What do you want to do? Let’s develop our hypotheses not only about what we want to do, but
• Do: test the potential solution, ideally on a small scale, and measure the results.
• Sense/Study: study the result, measure effectiveness, and decide whether the hypothesis is supported or not.
• Act: if the solution was successful, implement it.

You may have read Demming in college, you may have implemented some of his ideas in your place of work or what have you and its probably time we apply this to more than just management theory for work, but management theory for having an awesome road trip.

Now let’s apply some PDSA.

National Parks Road Trips

Everyone loves to have a road trip to see National Parks. In many ways, it’s a right of passage for growing up in America to experience a national park at the mercy of a long drive with your family packed into your car. Our National Parks are extremely busy these days so appropriate planning, alternative plans and backup plans for your alternative plans are a must. There are millions of reasons something can (And will) go wrong (or require a change of plans) on your trip – so apply PDSA to think through your itinerary, come up with your main plans, alternative plans and some idea of backup plans.

Plan:  Which park(s) are you going to – do you know if its peak/offseason, can you reserve a campsite? Can you reserve a nearby hotel?? Is there food/supplies nearby? Will I need to be aware of wildlife? bears?

Do: Call ahead, make reservations, study peak seasons or offseasons.

Sense: Will the park fit our itinerary? Will it be full? Are there neighboring places we can stay at? camp at? If everything isn’t filling up or its offseason, perhaps there is flexibility in this part of your schedule.

Act: Implement your plan. Be open to alternatives.

Gone are the days of just hopping in a car hoping for the best. The odds are you may be sleeping at a Wal-mart parking lot if you don’t plan accordingly (or if you’re an offseason tourist, more power to ya!).

No Smores for you!

When we went to Davis Mountains State Park we found out that there was an open fire burn ban. Our kids had long planned on enjoying smores every night and relaxing around the campfire. We had to come up with alternative ideas and plans and we were able to use charcoal in the fire rings to cook dinner and slow roast smores. We planned for charcoal for cooking food and since we were using more for other desires (smores and some evening heat), we had to make sure to get more while in town since the closest town and stores were far away. So while we did miss a nice glowing fire, we made the best of it and made a note to check our reservations at other sites to make sure there were no burn bans and restrictions or that we planned for them accordingly.

Not everything is a dire change or risk, but by keeping track and being aware, you can still keep everyone happy and make the best of it. Everything you learn makes it much easier to improve upon and make the best of.

Road Trip Route Planning

There are some amazing tools and services on the internet to help you with route planning. One can use Bing Maps or Google Maps to plot or course or you can use a system like roadtrippers.com to map a course, set waypoints and plot out your trip plan as granular as you wish.  Even with these tools, the same planning is highly recommended.

Plan: Use a route planning tool to plan your route. Track stops, fuel, food, destinations.

Do:  Make reservations, make backup stops, make time for rest & recovery days

Sense: Will I want to drive that far in one day? How much fuel will I need? What day of the week is it? Will it be extremely packed on the weekend? Will stores be open on Sunday?

Act: Create route plan, itinerary, save to mobile device, share with family & friends

On any long road trip, don’t forget to plan for pit stops – not just pit stops for meals but pit stops for restroom breaks, pit stops to stretch out and pit stops for fuel.  As part of your planning remember that when you’re out west “in the country” you may have to plan ahead for fuel, food and restroom services. You don’t want to get stuck in the desert because you’re driving out in the middle of nowhere on a Sunday and that one gas station you thought would be open isn’t.

Scenic Drive Road Trips

Planning a scenic drive as part of your long road trip or a day trip is a fun way to relax and take it all in. Just remember that you and many other people probably have the same idea. Use this to your advantage, not as a reason for frustration.  Some of the best advice I ever got while enjoying some of the scenic drives in Alaska was “If you see a few cars pulled over,  pull over” – Not for obvious reasons such as someone speeding or a broken down vehicle (offer some help!) but if you see people parked and pointing at something,  pull over and take a look (safely please!).  Following this simple advice, we got to see bears, whales, mountain goats, moose, coyotes, herds of elk and so much more. Had I just had my eyes on the road or paid attention merely to just what was in front of me I would have missed so much of the experience that I made the drive for, to begin with.  Slow it down, take it all in and use those “rest areas” and “Scenic overlooks”.

Plan: Plan to enjoy the trip, soak in the scenery and expect it to take some time – Be flexible out the door

Do: Set aside time, give a lot of buffers, remember to allow yourself to be in the moment.

Sense: Be flexible – Stop at that coffee shop, visit the “kitchy” store, try that mom and pop restaurant. This is what a road trip is about. Be aware of the distance between cities & stops and make sure you got fuel & water. If you’re out on a Sunday a lot of small towns are reduced services.

Act: Enjoy! Change your plans if you need to!

It’s the Journey, not the Destination

Enjoy the moment! The simple concept of “Plan Do Sense Act” is to give your brain a simple concept to think through to always be working towards your goal – an awesome road trip. When you plan your adventure – even if loosely around this concept every year you can expand upon your experience, lessons learned and be that much more prepared.

PDCA / PDSA is an iterative, four-stage approach for continually improving processes, products or services, and for resolving problems. It involves systematically testing possible solutions, assessing the results, and implementing the ones that are shown to work.

Not everything is a problem in the sense of a dire issue, a failure to succeed or missed business opportunities or having your competitors pass you buy – but by applying this continuous improvement cycle to your road trip – you can design a system of thought that builds upon knowledge of what works, what doesn’t work and come up with ways to make sure all of your trips are an amazing experience.

Let’s expand our “PDSA” to more components of our road trip.

• Vehicle Maintenance
• House/Apartment While gone
• Pet Care while gone
• Emergency Care
• Travel Budgets

What would you do if you experience a vehicle break down while on a road trip? Did you think through PDSA and come up with an impact analysis? Did you “Sense” your pros and cons for ways to address potential impacts? Did you Act on them?

Road Trip Plan – Put it on paper!

In order for PDSA to really shine, you should really have a written plan – either on your favorite notebook/journal or on an easy to use electronic device that is quickly accessible, charged and ready to go.

I really enjoy using OneNote to create checklists and do vacation planning. OneNote is available on Windows, OSX, Android, iOS and over the web and the app syncs for offline viewing so whether you have service or not, you can have access to your road trip plan and share it with friends and family easily.

http://www.onenote.com/download

What would I have in my OneNote?

Pre-Travel Checklist – Make an easy to use checklist of things that need to get done. Do pets have a pet sitter? If you’re bringing pets do you have all their food, current shots, medicine, shelter? Did you arrange for someone to watch your house? Water your lawn? Check your mail while your out?

Daily Itinerary Pages – Each day I’d have a simple itinerary of things to see/do, phone numbers for reservations, hotels, campsites. Leave rooms so you can take notes and use these notes for future planning. Maybe even track your fuel and consumables on your daily itinerary so you can spend a few minutes to adjust. I know when my vehicle is heavily loaded up I get less gas mileage but if I choose to drive a few miles an hour slower I may actually improve efficiency and save a few bucks. (and enjoy the journey a bit more)

Post Road Trip Notes – What worked, what didn’t work. What did you plan to do and what did you actually achieve? Did you run out of money before you thought you would? Did you not have enough time to do everything you wanted to do? Did you have any vehicle breakdowns or issues that you want to be better prepared for on your next road trip?

We’re working on a public OneNote notebook and we’ll publish it here soon as a template you can use for your trip planning!

The idea of PDSA is to track what works, what doesn’t work – iterate on improving for your next adventure and using your history of learning to improve your next trips.

Spend a few minutes keeping them updated from start to finish of planning a trip and completing a trip.

Use these plans to optimize your budget & expense tracking.

Create and share a journal with your friends and family. Since your tracking everything you’re now an expert on the road, you can share your dos & don’ts with friends and family.(we’d love to hear your stories on our forums! too!)

You can start planning your next adventure and getting into the road trip mood long before your foot touches the skinny pedal. A little bit of planning and iterating on your plan over your adventures will go a long way in making your road trips that much more memorable, easy to bare and fun for the entire family.

Road Trip Books

A comprehensive guide of what to do and what to see on a road trip would end up being a book, so without further ado, here are some books for you to check out if you are interested in ideas and suggestions.

Do you have any advice for road trips? Do you have an adventure you would like to share? Any simple tips or tricks?  Leave feedback below or join one of our forums or our groups and participate in our community.