Your commute is slowly killing you

Since I am effectively blogging daily at the moment, allow me to indulge one of my more negative (and perhaps toxic) traits, the rant. But let me be clear, this rant comes from a place of sincere frustration and sadness. Not because of the commute itself, but because of the ever-present anxiety causes by the lack of reliability and faith in the UK’s public transit infrastructure.

That, and the ridiculously high cost of commuting.

I recently came across an article featured on Hacker News and oh boy did it resonate with me, the headline gives it away. Commuting time of more than 30 min one way linked to a higher chance of depression.

My commute is 3x that. This means that in order to fulfil an 8-hour shift at my office, I have to spent 3 hours commuting. Today it is particularly annoying since I will be leaving the office at 1230 to attend a dentist appointment. 3 hours of traveling for 3 hours in the office.

And then there is the opinion that is held by most people in the IT industry, the office is a place where productivity goes to die. Sure, it has its advantages. There is the socialising with your colleagues, and the hallway track which simply isn’t possible when you only communicate in scheduled meetings.

But for most in IT, our work requires long periods of concentration without interruptions. This isn’t possible in an office environment as other colleagues who refuse to put in support tickets, instead prefer to just pop in as if this somehow results in their issues being resolves more quickly.

It doesn’t, they take longer.

So to spend three hours day only to end up being less productive is not only depressing, it is soul-destroying.

This is a digression, I’ll save the office rant for part two. Now, back to commuting…

one of the biggest losses with commuting is the amount of housework that then doesn’t get done. A 90-minute commute one way is an hour and a half of my life I spend sitting every day. I would gladly spend 90 minutes a day cleaning house etc. if it meant I had a spare half hour to do fun things, instead I get home with just enough time to eat, shower, watch an episode of something and sleep. That’s the real killer to mental health I think. You come home to a house with chores piling up, so things don’t feel like a home, and you cannot find the willpower (after some time) to continue doing those chores at the expense of free time. – Grimblewald

Perfect.

I’ll be driving soon, and it cannot come sooner. It’ll cut my commute down to 25 minutes on a good day.