Do you commute? I know people in California who commute an hour and a half each way to work. That’s three hours a day round trip, five days a week for a total of 15 hours a week. Multiply that by 50 weeks and you get 750 hours or 93 8-hour days spent commuting every year.
That’s like having a part-time job — that doesn’t pay! In fact it costs you more money in gas, increased stress, increased risk of getting into an accident, and the valuable time that you’re not able to be more productive or do the things you’d rather be doing.
There is a psychological term for this: “Crazy!” But, you do what you have to do. Real estate in Tennessee isn’t ‘crazy’ expensive (like California) so you don’t have go to these extremes just to buy a house.
According to the US Census Bureau, the average commute time in the United States in 2003 was a little over 47 minutes round trip. That’s 3.9 hours per week, 195 hours per year or 24 8-hour days spent commuting every year.
How can you turn this otherwise unproductive time spent commuting into productive time? Whether you’re a commuter or you do a lot of job related driving, here are a few ideas for your consideration.
Do not listen to the radio. Subscribing to XM or SIRIUS is preferable to regular commercial radio. Even then, be selective. Only listen to commercial free stations. Be very careful what you subject your mind to. Advertisers have become very good at using sophisticated techniques, including conversational hypnosis, to influence you to buy their product(s) or agenda(s). They usually have their best interest at heart, not yours.
Infinitely preferred to the radio, get an iPod (or other MP3 device) and figure out how to get it to play through your car stereo system. Most new car stereo systems and rental cars now come with an auxiliary ‘in’ jack, so you just need a short 1/8″ stereo cord (male to male) that you can get at Radio Shack for about $4. You can also get adapters for iPods that allow you to wirelessly use a dedicated channel on the FM stereo in the car to play your iPod though. I prefer the cord because you sometimes get static interference with the wireless/FM stereo solution.