8 Reasons You Should be Talking About Commute Time

Shhh! - One Secret Your employer Didn't Tell you about job: Your Commute time.

Hello and welcome back my dear chai buddies.

I am finally back from my hibernation. And I promise to never vanish away - unless life throws some really interesting "opportunities" at me to solve through.

So, are you all ready and set to get to office today? Lockdown rules have almost vanished. One phenomenon which has started again for many of you is hustling through the crowds and public transport to get to work. But while in quarantine many prayed earnestly for life to return to normal, now, that it is finally happening, we have some mixed reactions. Well let's just say - "We got used to it, didn't we. Change sucks!". (Although at times, change rocks isn't it). 

Now that you are all dressed, sipping chai or coffee or any kind of beverage you love before heading out for your day, I know, secretly you are indeed wondering about a very important issue. If inspired by vampires or jennies , you are wishing if some magical entity could have shipped you to and from work every day so that you didn't have to hustle through it. Well, well, in utopian life where all of these come to life and our fantasies come true isn't happening. While you are cursing your long drawn journey, let's go by a life philosophy - and discuss commute time. So here are 

8 Reasons you should be talking about commute time - which your employer doesn't tell you about your job. 

1) How your commute time is making you sick

Wake up in the morning, ideally between 5-6 am, and go for a walk or do yoga or meditate peacefully, calmly, relaxing on a mat. Take a shower. Then, slowly sip your chai or coffee while planning for the day. Then, get ready and enthusiastically head for office.

Well - wake up my chai buddies. Wake up from this amazing dream. While this is ideally our target, vision, dream whatever you call it, with long commute times, you are not having so much time for work-outs. Your travel time would gobble it up all. And we all have become aware that less physical activity is rather an open invitation for several physical problems.

2) Your Mental health takes a toll.

OMG!, why didn't I hear the alarm. Now what do I do, run run. I will miss the bus. The metro would be so crowded now! I have an important meeting and I will be late for it. I was late to return home - the traffic was horrible. Managing home and work - ugh!. I couldn't even sleep properly, completely.

Are these familiar. Well beginning your day like this everyday does lead to piling up stress which eventually burns you down completely. Is it worth it to send down the depression whirlpool?

3) More time spent on social media

Are you familiar with the sight of people being into their mobile phones through their entire commute times:

Apart from work facets, people also tend to spend time on social media. And while social media is unarguably useful for variety of reasons, it is also a source to numerous vices in people's lives. From feeling inadequate about your own life, to FOMO, to feeling isolated, to getting depressed, it adds all the wrong ingredients in your life. 

4) More Time away from friends and family

While in school and in undergrad days many of us wants to get away from family, step into the world out there, expand and broaden our horizons, make new friends, etc. Alternately, we all may have that one friend who stands with us like a rock. We may even start our own families. Unless our friend turns toxic or we have an unfortunate family life, we all love to be with our loved ones - family, friends. But when we have to spend most of our time in commuting, automatically it correlates to reduced to nil time for the people we care the most about. 

5) Operating like a programmed Auto-mode

Have you ever realized that people get extremely frustrated with their lives when something goes wrong. While commuting to work, I would often come across them. And the reason why they would start to panic would be - inability to quickly decide alternate course of actions if plan A goes wrong. And this would be because in most cases people didn't have a plan B. 

This happens because many a times people unknowingly start operating in Auto-mode. Here, they start going through their life every single day like a machine pre-programmed. Neither they notice the subtle signs of life, nor take inspiration from its intricacies. They just go on. This SEVERELY effects their Creativity, Attention, Communication, Efficiency, Productivity or CACEP.

6) Earning - but not enjoying

Money can afford life. Money can't buy time and happiness. While you might be having your bank balances overflowing (wish!) what if all you have is just your money and - no time to enjoy it, no one to enjoy it with? While you may be able to buy expensive things with it, your job might give you a position and a sense of power too, but just imagine the following situation:

"God forbid, but you meet with an accident. You may be able to afford the best clinic and facilities. But because you have spent all your time in commuting, now, you do not have any one beside you in your hour of need." And if you happen to witness another patient, who is as rich as you, yet, just because of shorter commute times could find those extra moments with their loved ones surrounding them in this hour of need, wouldn't that effect you deeply, negatively.

7) No time for hobbies

We all have that one thing which we love to do. It may or may not make us money, yet, we still do it. It can be collecting art or antiques, drawing, painting, embroidery, writing, reading, going on a hike and what not. 

But when we have long commute times, we have to curtail upon a lot, including our hobbies. Literally, unless we find another way to work up our hobby along our commute, we have to feel like a lot is taken away from us.

8) Competition jinx

"So, I was waiting for my interview to begin a few days back. I am finally willing to return to work and well, yes, this is indeed very important for me. My interview scheduled at 10:30 AM doesn't start well until 12:00 PM. And there were around 30 people against one post and given some additional paper-based bureaucracies my actual interview started at around 12:30 PM. I had reached the venue at 9:45 AM. It takes a little over an hour to reach the venue. I wonder, why wouldn't they do an online interview in a digital era. I am horrified to imagine commuting everyday to work pushing through the crowd. And if I say something about it, you can see there are other candidates and I need this job."

"I go to work every day commuting 2 hours to go and 2 hours to come back. I get really tired when I reach home. I am searching for opportunities near home, but as a single mom (because my husband works in a different city) and a woman, not all offices are equipped with suitable policies. In the previous place I worked, I had to face a lot of humiliation, hate-comments, stereotyped gestures. It effected my promotion too and also my mental health. In my new place, there is a lot of office politics. Intense competition to get ahead. Still, I can keep my baby in the creche as these days we can't trust maids at home. Also, office policies against gender or life-based bullying is taken seriously by  top management. They remain busy most of the time. But there is still a ray of hope, as when they find out they take action. However, I would appreciate more spontaneity. I can't say more about it though, you see there are several candidates out there."

"I travel 6 hours every day. It creeps me out to think, that everyday I have to spend 3 hours to get to office to meet with my colleagues whom I just can't stand at all. I get only 6 hours with my family - which I spend sleeping due to my exhaustion. I hate the competition, my job. My colleagues are toxic."

Are these familiar with you? I bet they are. With many of you reading this blog. These are parts from real life anecdotes shared with me over conversation with people, (name anonymous upon request) while researching for this blog. And do you know what both of them ended with - 

"I don't feel valued at all. Like there is no concern for my time at all. I wish I could do something about it. This commute time is like a killer. A silent one. And because we have so much competition, we can't even complain about it."

Around 7% of an Indian's day gets spent in just commuting to and from work. 7% of your day. 

Imagine what could you have done, if you would have had those 7% of your day. People reported happier relationships with colleagues and were overall much happier with their lives with lower commute times. Some are already taking a note of it and owrking to reduce commute times. For others, it is highly recommended to do so.

Another mode is WFH - which many have opeted for even when offices have opened. A study by Stanford revealed that WFH increased productivity levels by 13%. Also, it is observed that a lot of issues which people report while having to commute daily, WFH options seems to balance or solve a lot of them. In the end, saving upon your commute time, you save a lot to life. 

Alternately, you can use your creativity on the streets and use your fellow commuters as your audience to showcase your hobby while traveling (and may be make some extra bucks too!). 

Maybe your employer hasn't added these facets to your salary slip as incentives for encountering such drastic hazards daily. But now you know what long commute times is doing to your life. So, what do you want - longer or shorter commute times? You can think over it while sipping some of these excellent chai from Organic India linked below:

Please leave a comment below to let others know your opinion regarding your commute time. Also, you can share your own commute story and how you make it productive. 

That's my first blog restarting after a long break. Stay tuned, as next one is just around the corner. 

While you wait, you can reach me out too by dropping an email at - aamiprabhasini@gmail.com.

Until next time. ... Stay Healthy, Happy and Safe.