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If you spend the average 26 minutes commuting to work each day and work just over 40 years (about 40 years and 3 ½ months), you will spend an entire year of your life commuting. Not a year of work days—a literal year of your life, every moment of every day, is spent commuting. If you do not believe me, here is the math for the minutes spent:
26 minutes × 2 = 52 minutes/day (round trip)
That is 260 minutes each week for a five-day workweek. (52 × 5 = 260)
Assuming you take two weeks off each year, that is 13,000 minutes each year. (260 × 50 = 13,000)
Or 520,000 minutes for a 40-year career. (13,000 × 40 = 520,000)
Which is 8,666.67 hours. (520,000 ÷ 60 = 8,666.67)
That is just over 361 days spent commuting. (8,666.67 ÷ 24 = 361.11)
If you have an average commute and take the minimal vacation time standardized in the United States (take more!), you will hit the one-year spent commuting mark just after spending 40 years in the workforce. If you started working at age 18, you will hit this point at age 58. If you start working at age 22, you will hit a year of life dedicated to commuting at age 62. If you took some time off or received further education to start your career at age 25, you will hit the year point at age 65. If you do not plan to retire before those ages, congratulations on spending an entire year of your life commuting!
If you take vacations like I do, this number may take longer to reach. However, if your commute is 30 minutes instead of 26, you will hit the year-of-life-spent-commuting mark in only 35 years instead of 40 years. Those commute minutes add up quickly!
Bill Perkins begins Die With Zero: Getting All You Can From Your Money and Your Life by discussing optimizing life and reflecting about the life experiences you want to have. Part of this is also reflecting on what experiences you want to minimize. When we do not intentionally choose how to spend our time, we can end up wasting entire years of life on activities that provide no joy (and potentially cause angst or stress).
This is why “even the relatively privileged among us rarely get around to doing the right things,” according to Oliver Burkemann, who reminds us that we often feel time crunched trying to fit more minutiae into our days but forget to acknowledge our larger priorities for the approximately 4,000 weeks we get to live. Unless you purposely choose to spend 52 out of 4,000 weeks commuting. (If you need a starting point reflecting on your life’s priorities while accepting that life is not infinite, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals encourages thoughtful reflection including a series of pointed questions for guidance.)
If spending more than 1% of your life commuting sounds like a bad choice to you, here are three strategies to gradually improve your commute situation:
1. Do not pay for your commute.
The first strategy is the equivalent of saying “do not go into debt” is the first rule of financial management. You are already paying with your time—a whole year of life—to commute to your job. If you are also paying money, which you then need to earn by spending more hours at your job, that is like going into life-hours debt. Do not pay for your commute if at all possible.
If you must commute in a way that costs money, whether by paying a public transportation fee or paying for gas/insurance/wear and tear/parking for your vehicle, find an employer that will reimburse you for commuting expenses or provide you a monthly stipend for your commute. In urban areas, many employers will just fill a public transit card with the calculated amount of money it should take you to commute to and from work each day. If you do not use the full amount of money because you take some time off or are sick for a day, any remaining money will be removed from the card at the end of the month before a new monthly allotment is added.
If your employer will not directly pay for your commute transportation, or you drive to work and assume some costs like car insurance that employers rarely pay, you can still inquire about contributing to an account to cover commuting expenses pre-tax. Some employers offer commuter benefits accounts, which function similar to a Health Savings Account but for commuting expenses, so employees are not taxed for paying to go to work.
If your current employer will not offset costs at all, identify the least expensive way to commute to work. The least expensive ways include walking, running, or biking (if you own a bike). The second tier includes biking using bike shares, riding a scooter using shared scooters, or using any other public transportation devices.
If cutting your commuting expenses sounds like a crazy proposition of frugal weirdos, perhaps you are right because Patrick and I have collectively tried out most of these methods. When we moved to DC we planned to live in a less expensive part of town and have a car, but we compared the overall cost of housing and commuting from this area and found out it was less expensive overall to live in a more expensive area with access to public transportation methods. Rent was higher, but rent plus transportation was less expensive.
When Patrick and I worked 1 mile and 1.2 miles, respectively, from home, we would walk to work together (passing by the White House, how scenic!). When I upgraded my job, I had to take the Metro over to Virginia, but I used to run to work enough days to keep my metro bill below $100 for all things (including not just work travel but also other places such as rugby practice). It was also refreshing to arrive at work at 7:30 AM knowing I already ran 4.6 miles while most folks were barely awake and irritable from Metro rides or drives that took a comparable amount of time. Patrick has used the DC bike share for commuting in the past, and he more recently had his employer cover public transportation fees so he could use the Metro to go to the office when needed for free.
Now that I have the luxury of a car, I figured out that parking is free at my office before 8:00 AM, so on the rare occasions that I have to go to the office, I go in at 7:00 AM and leave by 8:00 AM to avoid any parking fees. On the even rarer occasion that I need to go in for something later in the day, we try to pair my work obligation with a Costco trip by Patrick since I work near the local Costco. He goes to Costco, runs errands we need to do anyways, parks for free with receipt validation, then picks me up from work!
2. Make your commute productive.
The second strategy to commute hacking is to make it productive. The easiest way is to exercise on your commute. This can be as simple as walking, but you can also make your commute a more challenging run or bike ride. Patrick and I have tried all of these. If you are lucky enough to work near your partner, like we were for about a year and a half, your walks can also become some quality time spent together while exercising—double benefits that will make your commute a net positive rather than causing angst!
In Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport describes how he undoubtedly maximized commute productivity by exercising and practicing focused deep thought on specific topics or problems while running to work. That is next-level commute productivity, and no matter how much I tried, I reverted back to imaging tackling folks while running rather than focusing on issues at hand. However, despite my relative lack of focus compared to superhuman Cal Newport, some of my best work ideas have popped into my head on commute runs, so the exercise to and from work certainly aids work-related innovation.
If you are reading this thinking, “I cannot run 30 miles twice a day to work, you urban city dweller,” I hear you. I grew up in a town with no stoplights, fewer than 3,000 people, and probably more farm animals than humans. I get it. If you must drive, take a train, ride the bus, or anything else, you can still have a productive commute. It is just more challenging and may require additional planning. If you are driving, there are two options: First, listen to podcasts or books on tape to learn while driving. This can get your mind working, generate new ideas, and increase innovation through a different avenue. The second option is to call your loved ones while you are commuting. When I was teaching in Las Vegas, I drove to work at 6:00 AM, but that commute was a great time to call my recently retired parents since it was 9:00 AM EST where they lived. Find some times that work for calls—safely, without looking down at your phone, of course!
For those commuting on trolleys, trains, subways, and buses, you can also take the same approaches as the commuting cars. However, you also may be able to do more productive tasks. Before COVID-19 created my current work-from-home reality, I would answer questions from Etsy customers, organize my calendar, or work on rugby scheduling from the Metro. Small side hustle tasks (or community hobby tasks) that require low concentration are great commuter tasks. However you decide to spend your commute, even if it is just reading a fun fiction book, do something for yourself so you are not just standing around thinking about how angry you are to spend a year of your life waiting at the bus stop.
3. Do not commute.
If we have ever met, you saw this one coming. Patrick just quit his job because he was unwilling to spend more of his life commuting to go to a place where he would do exactly the same tasks he was doing at home. We are proponents of creating your own work schedule and work environment to the greatest extent possible within the realistic parameters of your job.
Unfortunately, this one does not apply to the doctors, construction workers, Starbucks cashiers, Nationals bullpen cart drivers, or anyone else that needs to be at a physical location to perform their job. However, as we previously outlined in our reasonable work demands article, even careers that require working at a certain location may have a paperwork component that can be completed elsewhere. If you stack all forms, notes, emails, and phone calls, you may even find that you have enough work for a full day working from home! Even if not, it is worth knowing what tasks you could do from anywhere in case the composition of your job changes as your career progresses.
If you can do your work from home, this is the easiest way to save on your commute. You are completely removing the entire year of life spent driving to the office or waiting for the train so you can use it to play with your kids, join a softball team, or go up to the rooftop pool and read a book.
Whether eliminating your commute is feasible should depend entirely on the requirements on your job, not the preference of your employer or supervisor. If you need help standing up to an employer who likes to see butts in seats, making yourself an indispensable employee helps when demanding to work from home. If you are going to the office to work on a computer, just like you would be at home, being a butt in a seat at the office does not add value.
And it costs an entire year of life.
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