Deliberate Commuting

For many, commuting is an unreasonable waste of time. And since time is the most crucial resource we have, commuting is an unreasonable waste of life.

But it makes up a sizeable chunk of many people’s lives. I spent about two hours in trains and busses each day to get to high school, then about three hours during my first years at university. I’ve heard of people who drove two hours one way by car just to get to their office within the same city they live in.

I never understood commuting for work that you can do from a computer. Because you can set up your computer almost anywhere or bring a notebook along. Especially since internet connections have become reasonably fast to send work-related data and files back and forth in seconds.

Thus, for work you do 100% while sitting at a computer, why would you force yourself to get to a specific place each day, more or less far from where you live? That always felt unnecessary and wasteful to me.

Sure there’s talking with other people, meetings, and whatnot that can’t be experienced equally if people are not in the same room. But if the forced shift to remote work and video calls and meetings in 2020 has taught us anything, I think it’s that a lot more is possible without commuting than was thought before. There are also difference in personal preferences about how often one likes to see people in person or spend time working without interruption in a quiet office. And where that is can also vary from person to person.

And sure you can make commuting time more worthwhile. You can make it reasonably productive. You can work on your notebook while sitting in a train. But then, couldn’t you do that better from a quiet home office? Or you can, for example, listen to an audio book while driving yourself.

I think we should aim for a more deliberate approach to commuting. Instead of mindlessly commuting every work day and for any type of work, we should be more selective with spending our life time on commuting. Or anything else. Guess deliberate choices in how we spend our time are always good.