7 ms·

Commuting wears you out. The energy and stress saved from not having to drive in bumper to bumper traffic or ride public transportation can add a good deal of p

by tedggh 28d ago

Commuting wears you out. The energy and stress saved from not having to drive in bumper to bumper traffic or ride public transportation can add a good deal of productivity.

zem 28d ago
100% agree. I'm the exact opposite of the grandparent - I get much better work done on my wfh days because I'm not drained by the commute.
- ghaff 28d ago
  I'd probably feel different if I had a 5-10 minute walk to an urban office but I never had. (Did have a very short suburban commute for a while, but people I knew were always pulling dangerous stunts when they saw me walking to pick me up so I pretty much gave it up.)
  - abustamam 28d ago
    I used to live 15 min walk, 5 min bike ride from an office i was required to go to twice a month. It was a nice commute. Then I moved and now its a 30 min drive. Not a nice commute.
    - ghaff 28d ago
      I didn't hate the 25-30 minute driving commute I had at one point but I had to go in pretty much every day even in the snow which wasn't great. This was a time when you were pretty much expected to go into the office other than a rare state of emergency. Latterly I had about a 30 minute driving commute again but I was doing so much travel that I wasn't consistently in the office that much.
tpmoney 28d ago
I feel the opposite. Before the pandemic, I would have said I'd 100% want a fully remote job if I could have it. I even looked at applying to Gitlab because of that. And then the pandemic hit and I spent 2 years working from home all the time. One of the surprising things I learned in that was that I need a commute. I need a physical separation of work and the rest of my life that lets me mentally shift gears from thinking about work things to thinking about home things. I needed some time to just listen to music or a podcast or audio book without any other demands on my time. And I found that going for a walk or something like that to replace the commute didn't have the same effect, for a number of reasons. There was the mental hurdle of forcing myself to try taking the walk instead of going straight from A to B since I was already there. There was the fact that while I could try to flush home concerns from my mind on the walk, coming back to my home where all those home concerns are right there for me to notice when I walk through the door meant that all that mental flushing was for naught. Now I admit that I am fortunate enough to have a commute where I'm rarely in bumper to bumper traffic, and it's less than a 30 minute drive. But at least for me, a commute is a vital part of my work routine.
- nunez 27d ago
  I'm the same way. I absolutely need a commute and a hard bifurcation of my work and personal environments. I've been paying for coworking services of some kind since COVID. That and having a separate work phone has helped a lot.
- naravara 27d ago
  My best situation was a commute to work that was about 45 minutes door to door and involved a 30 minute bus ride. I mostly got to read novels on the bus. It was nice. I was childless and petless then though. The thought of squeezing everything in between school drop-offs, pick-ups, after-school scheduled activities, and dog walks is when things get really annoying.

by tedggh 28d ago

Commuting wears you out. The energy and stress saved from not having to drive in bumper to bumper traffic or ride public transportation can add a good deal of productivity.

zem 28d ago

100% agree. I'm the exact opposite of the grandparent - I get much better work done on my wfh days because I'm not drained by the commute.

ghaff 28d ago
I'd probably feel different if I had a 5-10 minute walk to an urban office but I never had. (Did have a very short suburban commute for a while, but people I knew were always pulling dangerous stunts when they saw me walking to pick me up so I pretty much gave it up.)
- abustamam 28d ago
  I used to live 15 min walk, 5 min bike ride from an office i was required to go to twice a month. It was a nice commute. Then I moved and now its a 30 min drive. Not a nice commute.
  - ghaff 28d ago
    I didn't hate the 25-30 minute driving commute I had at one point but I had to go in pretty much every day even in the snow which wasn't great. This was a time when you were pretty much expected to go into the office other than a rare state of emergency. Latterly I had about a 30 minute driving commute again but I was doing so much travel that I wasn't consistently in the office that much.

tpmoney 28d ago

I feel the opposite. Before the pandemic, I would have said I'd 100% want a fully remote job if I could have it. I even looked at applying to Gitlab because of that. And then the pandemic hit and I spent 2 years working from home all the time. One of the surprising things I learned in that was that I need a commute. I need a physical separation of work and the rest of my life that lets me mentally shift gears from thinking about work things to thinking about home things. I needed some time to just listen to music or a podcast or audio book without any other demands on my time. And I found that going for a walk or something like that to replace the commute didn't have the same effect, for a number of reasons. There was the mental hurdle of forcing myself to try taking the walk instead of going straight from A to B since I was already there. There was the fact that while I could try to flush home concerns from my mind on the walk, coming back to my home where all those home concerns are right there for me to notice when I walk through the door meant that all that mental flushing was for naught. Now I admit that I am fortunate enough to have a commute where I'm rarely in bumper to bumper traffic, and it's less than a 30 minute drive. But at least for me, a commute is a vital part of my work routine.

nunez 27d ago
I'm the same way. I absolutely need a commute and a hard bifurcation of my work and personal environments. I've been paying for coworking services of some kind since COVID. That and having a separate work phone has helped a lot.
naravara 27d ago
My best situation was a commute to work that was about 45 minutes door to door and involved a 30 minute bus ride. I mostly got to read novels on the bus. It was nice. I was childless and petless then though. The thought of squeezing everything in between school drop-offs, pick-ups, after-school scheduled activities, and dog walks is when things get really annoying.