There are far better ways to spend the time. Three hours a day commuting is too much.

A brief digression about precision. In some professions there are absolutes. In engineering there is only “good enough”. One way to translate good enough into numbers, is to say within five or ten percent. So, a resistor is 1000Ω±10%, meaning it could be as small as 900 Ohms or as large as 1100 Ohms – or anywhere in between. If your circuit fails to work when constructed with a resistor from that range of values you either have to change the circuit or specify a tighter tolerance, like 1000Ω±5%. Being within ten percent doesn’t mean that ninety percent of the time it’s some exact value, but rather, one hundred percent of the time it’s nearly the exact value within a tolerance of ten percent.

So, back to the original topic. When your lifestyle is such that you’re working seven and a half hours a day (37.5 hour work week), it usually means plus or minus some minutes. Carrying the analogy from above, a ten percent tolerance would be as little as 6.75 or as much as 8.25 hours.

When your commute time is 1.5 hours each way, 10.5 hours is forty percent more:

((10.5 ÷ 7.5) − 1) × 100 = 40%

No matter how you look at it, this is not good enough.

As a self employed person, this reduces the per hour or per diem rate by nearly 30%:

(((1 / 7.5) – (1 / 10.5)) / (1 / 7.5)) * 100 = 28.6%

To be sure, it’s not difficult – I sit on a train and read – but it’s not what I want to do either. I don’t come home and continue reading or listening to music.

There are a number of reasons that one can’t do what one wants:

  • connectivity is poor, expensive and bandwidth sucks in tunnels – so watching Coursera course videos doesn’t work
  • space is often limited on cash cow commuter runs, where statistics allow the available seating to be used to capacity - so studying with both a textbook and a notebook is challenging
  • the ride is quite bumpy and jiggly - so drawing or other fine art turns out badly
  • you have to carry everything you need with you - so power tools are out
  • you generally have to be quiet - so phone calls are different

Occasionally, when I’m traveling along a lake where the westering sun illuminates the vineyards with that golden glow, wearing headphones playing a favorite track while I’m drinking a beer, I can enjoy it.

But normally, it’s not so pleasant. I have to find a way to charge for travel time, or more strenuously strive to work from home.