Commuting? Have you done the math?

I used to car commute that distance from the DC suburbs into DC, and it was hellish. 2 hours of my life each day wasted in ungodly traffic. That's not how people were meant to live. I'd much rather have Biden's 100 mile Amtrak commute into DC from Wilmington than the 20 mile car commute into DC from the suburbs.

Daily commute is 1.5 hours each way by public transport. 75% of that time is useful. Net result is 5 * 2 * 1.5 = 15 hours spent sitting on the train each week, of which just(1 - 0.25) * 15 = 3.75 is wasted (mainly in changing from one vehicle to the next). This, superficially, doesn't sound so bad. My employer is understanding so I travel outside rush hour so I always get a seat and can do stuff on my laptop. This means that I arrive at the office late and leave the office late. My colleagues just say that I work in a slightly different time zone.

What really kicks hard is that when you're at work you're 1.5 hours from home, the simple stuff - like going to the supermarket or the post office - becomes complicated. I leave before the supermarket opens, and I get home after it closes. Tricky things like being at home in the morning to receive a parcel become really complicated and end up costing much more than half a day.

tl;dr the math is good, but the model is too simple. Living a commuting life costs more than you'd calculate.

My wife and I both have a commute by car that is 25-35 minutes each. We recently changed our schedules to make it easier for us to commute -- together. So now, instead of having an hour out of the day that couldn't have been spent with each other, we now have it together. We can talk about our day, talk about any issues going on, plan various "things." It's really quite nice.

Compared to driving, cycling is incredibly life-giving. I get exercise, and can maneuver around downtown with ease (I never have to worry about a parking spot).

However, I can use the time on the bus to catch up on email and news (I'm paid by the hour, so no point in working on the bus if I'm going to put in an 8-hour day anyway), or even doze off slightly. By contrast, when you're driving, your attention has to be entirely focused on the freeway. So while he has 50 minutes of being locked up driving, I have 100 minutes of time to relax.

If you're lucky! I commuted on public transport for a while in the south east of England and if your face wasn't smashed into someone's armpit for the entire journey, you were doing well (or working unsociable hours) ;-)

More people should push work off peak - who's bloody idea was it to get people to work 9 to 5? Why not 10 - 4 like me?

Hurried, stressed people under commuter pressure don't work well anyway and those extra hours are just wasted with busy work. I'm talking office workers here - blue collar workers have it completely different.

My rationale is that I'll only do it for a few years, and it's worth it to have the company in question on my resumé. I think the fact that we all aren't working from home 2-3 days a week is frankly ridiculous, but the sea change is already in progress and can't be stopped. Eventually working remotely 50-80% of the time will be the norm.

Things I've done with the time (which otherwise would have never happened):

-Used Pimsleur I-III to learn some Mandarin, and more importantly, HOW to learn a new language(/other things). Spoken Mandarin is less intimidating than westerners think, and the grammar is simpler than English in a lot of ways. (Caveat: My Mandarin is by no means good. I couldn't find any good systematic ways to keep going after Pimsleur III)

-Listened to podcasts on nutrition and got very in-tune with how what I eat effects how I feel, how productive I am, and what happens during my gym time.

-Neuroscience podcasts, ditto. That stuff is interesting. Especially relating to dopamine, if you're a heavy internet user and you check your email every thirty seconds on your phone.

-Developed a better idea of how successful freelancers operate and how they've transitioned into that (Kalzumeus podcast, Ruby Freelancers). Ditto for very successful startup founders (Techzing, Stanford's Innovation Thought Leaders podcast).

-Developed my musical taste.

-Developed my rock climbing grip by using a grip trainer.

-Learned to calm my mind and relax and not waste mental energy on situations I have no immediate control over. Shitty traffic is a great time to practice this specifically because it's so aggravating.

That said - the key thing is that this is for a finite period of time, and you have to act on stuff you learn. The eventual endgame is that you gradually run out of interesting things that you can pick up from a podcast and then do on your own. You want to use the time to work on something more specific.

In addition to the time cost, sitting in one position and staring in one direction for an hour destroys any kind of flow that you have. It doesn't matter whether you leave work energized and ready to rock - when you get home, sitting in a car for an hour will usually make you tired. If you work on complex side projects or like to go out after work, this has a pretty substantial impact.

Whenever I get a ping from a recruiter, flexibility is the first thing I ask them about -- both core hours as well as working at home options. My favorite response was, "well, once you are established, you might be able to work at home on friday now and then". The worst of the responses usually come from established companies rather than startups.

I understand the need to time to collaborate, face time, and the like. Some people need more of it than others. That said, the best teams I have seen/worked with were ones that provided some flexibility to allow their employees to work in the manner most suited to their lifestyle. (I don't mean complete capitulation, but a base that has some give and take for both the company and the individual).

I do like driving. I take road trips regularly, but the day to day grind of other people in their metal cages, stressed, distracted, etc. isn't driving, it is commuting. For where I live, public transport to Silicon Valley from where I live involves a bus and/or train, which is 1.5-2 hrs each way, not really reasonable for me.

I wouldn't like to drive (wouldn't be much faster), but I'm still nowhere near as relaxed or productive on public transport than I could be at home - it's stuffy, limited space (leg room, anyone?), and you can't always get a seat. Account for the 6 months it took to get used to reading on a moving vehicle without feeling ill within 10 minutes, and I've lost even more time.

I enjoyed it for a while (I thought the time would force me to achieve something), but as I started using my spare time differently the commute became the biggest time suck of anything, and there was very little I could do about it (mostly due to infrequent and badly aligning public transport schedules).

My previous job I worked from home and traveled by air. My travel to the airport was covered by mileage reimbursement. Basically, I never paid for gas for work.

In my new job, I new I'd have a 25 mile (1-way) commute, coming to $160+ a month in gas. That took $2,000 right out of the higher salary.

On the same note, when I moved from the Bay Area to Denver, I stopped having to pay $140/mn in BART passes and worked from home instead, which was a nice savings in both money and time.

However, I did enjoy my time on BART. I had my laptop out the entire time working on code, except when I was unlucky enough to have to get on at Embarcadero and not get a seat until El Cerrito.

I've actually found the train ride to be valuable. It gave me an hour or two a day of uninterrupted time when I could focus on what I wanted to do: either work on my side projects or read books.

In the recent past, I've been too busy to read much fiction; having time on a train which was "useless" anyhow let me get back into it. I enjoyed a whole bunch of fantasy and SF novels thanks to having a commute. This is where something like a Kindle really helps: it's light and convenient enough to read even if I can't get a seat, and I can carry as many books at once as I want. It also let me re-read the Wheel of Time series on the train, which would not have been practical with hardcover (or even paperback) copies of the books :P.

If I did manage to get a seat--and, since I often travelled at off-peak hours, I usually did--I had other options as well. For one, I could work on my own projects. This was particularly nice because I had a very limited amount of time, say exactly 40 minutes. This helped me focus on specific tasks, like fixing some bugs, that would have been less interesting if I was planning to work for several hours at home.

Another option was reading non-fiction. I actually learned a good deal about theoretical CS, programming languages and type theory last summer. Partly, this was because I was working at an awesome startup; however, reading academic material on the train also helped immensely. Since the train had less distractions than virtually anywhere else I spend time, I was able to get through denser passages without any compulsions to do something else (like go on HN :P).

I've also found the train a good place to read CS papers; since the time I can spend on it is inherently limited, it helps me get a quick overview that is neither too deep nor too shallow. Given an unbounded amount of time, I tend to either quickly skim a paper and get distracted or spend far too much time thinking about particular details. Reading something on a train helps me get a holistic and useful first impression.

One thing I've learned from experience: if at all possible, avoid transfers. This is especially bad between different services like Caltrain and Bart, but even Bart's timed transfers are decidedly sub-optimal. Two 20-minute chunks with a five-minute break in the middle are significantly less useful than a single 40-minute chunk. Also, knowing you will have to get up to transfer soon definitely creates more of an overhead for opening your laptop or getting a book out of your bag.

Anyhow, in total, I'm actually pretty happy if I can commute by train. Even though it does take up a fair amount of time, the time can actually be useful. I've even found the constraints make me more productive for certain things than just having that time at home.

For a few years, I took the subway (BART) from Berkeley to SF. In theory, I could have used that 45 min commute to do something useful. In practice, I spent most of it standing, packed in like sardines.

At first, it was hard to justify the huge increase in living expense by moving from Berkeley to SF. But the move decreased my commute from 45 min on public transportation to a 10 min walk.

Totally worth it.

http://ftp.iza.org/dp1278.pdf