How Much Does Your Commute Really Cost You?
…In Which Your Author Breaks A Rule for a Worthwhile Cause
Tim Ferris posts: How Much Does Your Commute Really Cost You?
Now, I’m trying really hard not to post links to other blogs in the place of content on this blog – which is why there’s the Tumblog* over to the left there (which you can also subscribe to if you’re interested) – but this post, I think, is well worth reading, and it fits in so well with my personal philosophy on this subject that it’s well worth sharing.
In most of NZ, people’s commute is fairly short – in my last actual job, it was a mere 20 minutes each way – but the odds are pretty good that we all know someone who takes more than an hour to get to or from work each day.
Add it up – 5 days a week, an hour each way – 10 hours of dead time a week. About 9% of your waking hours spent in the worst sort of unprofitable time imaginable – worse, it’s probably negative profit (a fancy way of saying that it’s a dead loss) when you factor in the negative effects of boredom and frustration on top of the fiscal costs.
Freelancing isn’t the answer for everyone, nor is telecommuting (at least not yet), but it’s well worth thinking of strategies to reduce your commute, or at least ways to make the time a little more useful to you. If your route to work is in heavy traffic, it’s quite possible to arrange a shift in your working hours – starting and finishing an hour later, or an hour earlier can be enough to halve your commute time.
More and more these days, employers are open to ways they can help their staff to improve their lives. If you can’t get out of the employment rut (which I know is hard), then perhaps you can improve your work life in other ways. It’s up to you, really.
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I think Tim’s comments mostly apply to those people who commute to work by driving.
I commute close to an hour each way door to door (40-odd minute bus ride depending on traffic and another 10 minute walk from bus stop to work) but that time isn’t really wasted time. I read. I catch up on my uni subject work. I listen to a bunch of tech podcasts. I cat nap. I don’t consider any of it wasted time at all.
The only thing wrong with my commute is that it takes time that I could be spending with my wife and boy.
Shane – I think that depends how you look at it.
The only of those things that the environment is particularly appropriate for is podcasts – reading/studying on a bus (I think it’s fair to say) isn’t as easy as it is in a library, or at home, and sleeping is definitely better done elsewhere :)
The very fact that there’s something else you’d rather be doing (time with wife and son) tells me that your priorities are such that you could easily find a better use for those 416 hours or so a year…