14 Commuting Life Hacks for Increasing Productivity and Beating Stress
| Ⓒ By Jonathan Roseland |
Commuting is a notorious time-waster for even the most notoriously productive people.
Time is always the most valuable resource of those who live Limitlessly and unfortunately, commuting robs many of us of between 4-10 hours weekly. To worsen the offense, it robs us of hours of what could be our very most productive times; early mornings and late afternoons before dinner. These are time slots that could be much better served...
- Day planning
- Eating healthy
- Reading
- Writing
- Working on entrepreneurial projects
- Spending time with loved ones
- Or staying fit
In addition to its immense cost in time, commuting is often a quite stressful activity; things like traffic jams, rude drivers, or missing one's bus or train will spike your stress levels.
If you believe that time is money here's an equation for determining your personal cost of commuting:
Your hourly compensation for your most productive activities X amount of hours you spend commuting a week + hard costs of having a car, gas, or public transportation fares
A Lifehacker.com article estimates that the costs of just a 40-minute each-way commute multiplied over 10 years will cost you at least $60,000 of wealth and 1.3 work years worth of time.
Considering its immense cost could commuting be what's holding you back from living limitlessly? Here are 13 life hacks for minimizing time spent commuting or at least making it more productive and less stressful.
Listen to educational podcasts.
Listening to albums or pop songs and commercials on the radio is a seriously wasteful way to spend your time behind the wheel.
Go into knowledge acquisition mode during your commute by listening to educational podcasts or audio programs. A lot of people like audiobooks but I feel I learn a lot more from podcasts, the knowledge in books is best absorbed in book form when you are devoting 100% of your attention to the book. Whereas a podcast is created for the knowledge to be absorbed in 30-45 minute chunks of time. Also, podcasts are free!
In addition to the Limitless Mindset Podcast, here are some other podcasts we recommend or you can just search iTunes for subjects that interest you.
Play Dual N-Back games on your phone.
20 minutes of Dual N-Back training a day is scientifically verified to increase your working memory, essentially the amount of RAM that your conscious mind has to solve problems and get complex things done. Dual N-Back training can be played as a game on your Android device or iPhone. If you don't have to drive and focus on the road play Dual N-Back games during your commute. Learn more about Dual N-Back software and its effects on the mind...
HRV training while commuting.
Commuting in stop-and-go traffic is a notorious source of high stress, to combat this hardcore Biohackers use the Heartmath's HRV training devices while commuting. Heartmath technology is based on 20 years of research on the mindset state of "coherence" between the heart, brain, and autonomic nervous system. Achieving coherence, basically feeling zenned out, has been linked to mental, emotional, and physical benefits like decreased stress levels.
The biofeedback device provides immediate feedback for events that stress you out... Get cut off by an errant mom-mobile? Zap the stress in moments as opposed to letting the low-level stress brood over you for minutes or hours.
Since the Heartmath devices are small and relatively undistracting, you can place them on your dash or center console, and safely practice heart rate variability training along with meditative breathing while driving.
Take public transportation or the train.
If you commute to the same place consistently public transportation is often a more Limitless commuting option...
- It saves you a lot of money over the cost of driving.
- You can take the time to enrich your mind by reading a book or playing Dual N-Back games.
- You can outline a plan for a productive day using an application on your smartphone like Evernote.
- You could write or even work on your laptop or tablet device.
- I even know some people who work on their social dynamics and communication skills (like using memory systems for remembering people's names and remembering personal details) while taking public transportation. They make it a point to chat with strangers sitting near them, some people have made friends or even met their lovers this way.
Many people decide against public transit because you usually have to spend a few minutes waiting at the bus or train station. If taking public transportation adds a few minutes to your commuting time you have to seriously weigh the benefits of public transportation against the time spent. Starting your day stressed out because of an unexpected traffic jam is seriously not good for having a healthy and productive day, in contrast, public transportation usually runs on time - anything that saves you from stress is worth considering.
Carpool.
If you have coworkers in the same area, save time, money, and stress by riding to work together. If you don't have coworkers in the same area you can use the site ERideShare.com to find a carpool in your area.
Examine your route.
Avoid the gridlock and breathing in fumes on the freeway, it may very well be that a lesser-known side route is less congested and will get you to your destination faster. I once found an alternative route to work along a creek through a historic neighborhood in my city. I'm not sure how much time it saved me but the nice view from the drive was a great way to start my day. Make sure to run your commute through Google Maps and select the avoid highways option. 30 seconds spent checking the Google Maps traffic overlay of your commute may save you 30 minutes sitting in traffic.
Adjust your commuting times: Leaving 30 minutes earlier or later may also save you time sitting in traffic.
Take voice notes.
Many productive people use their commute as a time to organize their thoughts for the day. While this is a pretty good idea the problem is that you are frequently distracted while doing so (especially if you are behind the wheel, in which case the vast majority of your attention should be on the road).
Organize your thoughts and record them for future review using voice note apps like Tote Notes (Android), Dragon Dictation (iPhone), Evernote, or Google Docs (via Android text transcription). Some of these will integrate with your Bluetooth device so you don't have to take your eyes off the road.
Don't speed.
Unless you are commuting across the country, speeding or aggressive driving won't save you enough time to be worth the risk of getting a speeding ticket or in an accident.
Don't look at (or worry about) what time it is.
This one might seem a little counter-intuitive but it will save you some peace of mind. If you are late, worrying about what time it is will NOT get you to your destination any sooner. All it will do is stress you out and make you less productive once you get to your destination.
Call people.
In today's world of text messaging, emails, and Facebook hearing the voice of a friend or family member is special. Depending upon what you do for work you could even make productive sales calls or calls to your coworkers or boss. A hands-free device is highly recommended so you can focus on driving safely.
Use Gasbuddy.com.
This website will tell you where to find the gas station with the lowest gas prices in your area. Gas prices don't vary a lot but if you buy a lot of gas, over time-saving 5%-10% can add up! Obviously, you shouldn't drive all the way across town to get the cheapest gas as it would defeat the purpose. Find the cheapest gas station within a few minutes of your regular commute.
Yell at a cute little teddy bear.
Lots of people seriously stress themselves by road raging at their fellow commuters. Buy a cute little teddy bear and place it on your dash, when you feel the urge to road rage yell at the teddy bear instead. Then you will feel silly for yelling at a cute little teddy and probably laugh at yourself. It's also a biohack, humor actually repairs the damage that stress does to your DNA.
Move somewhere more central to your life.
If you can, live centrally to your job and the places you go most frequently. Over the years I've found that if I lived in the central or downtown part of my city I was equidistant from the majority of the places I needed to commute to. This cut my commuting time down significantly from living in the suburbs. Many people choose to live out in the suburbs to save money, they should seriously weigh the savings in money over the high cost of commuting in time, money, and stress.
Check out these useful heatmap-style tools that estimate how long your commute will be to different places. Probably a good idea to check this out before deciding to move someplace.
Work from home.
The ultimate way to save yourself from the tyranny of a commute is to work from home. With the current state of technology, employers are taking telecommuting a whole lot more seriously. Unless you are a waiter or lifeguard, chances are that at least some of your work can be done via computer, which means it can be done from home. How to shift your work environment from the office to home...
- Identify several tasks that you do in your job which can be done from home.
- Propose to your boss that you will be more productive batching these tasks together and devoting one day a week to doing these tasks from home. Ask for a trial day working from home.
- Be extra productive and focused on your trial work at home day, and show your boss the results.
- Propose making this a regular weekly thing.
- Over time if your results working from home are consistent, propose to your boss that you spend more of the work weekdays at home. If you may even want to be subtly less productive while in the office to show your boss that you are a more valuable asset to the company working from home.
- Propose using Skype or Zoom to check in with your boss in the morning at the same time you would usually roll into the office. That way your boss knows you ain't slacking or sleeping in on the company dime. Also, let your boss know that you are installing Rescue Time or Facebook Limiter on your home computer so you won't be wasting time on social media.
If your boss is especially difficult to convince that working from home is a good idea, you might want to show them this Standford University Study which conclusively shows that employees who work from home are more productive, happier, and less likely to quit. If your boss can't be convinced avail yourself of some of my reviews of negotiating and persuasion books so you can adroitly negotiate a raise with your boss. Start with Never Split the Difference, a must-read for ethical social engineers here...
In the +10 years that I've been an entrepreneur...
I've done almost NO commuting and it's made me much happier (and more productive) dude. I hope you can banish commuting from your life!
Finally...
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