How I started loving my 3 hour daily office commute?

I don't love driving. In fact, I hate driving.

I hate it so much that just in order to avoid being in the dreadful Bangalore traffic, I would leave home much before the morning-hour traffic got underway, and leave office in the evening the same way - even risking being viewed by my manager, peers and team members as "not working hard enough" :). When I could, I bought my house in the same area where my office was. And when that was not possible, I only joined companies that were in the same area where I lived!

And I did that for over two decades, with the last three years working from home as a solopreneur management consultant. With a zero-commute on an almost daily basis, and not more than 6-8 days commute or travel to client location on a monthly basis, I was in perpetual state of bliss.

And it showed in everything I did. I went for morning walks with my wife, I spent more than a couple hours each day reading (I read upto 100 books a year), I wrote articles and blogs (and even managed to publish a book), and even managed movie nights during the week. I was generally more happy, more energetic and full of new ideas compared to a lot of people I knew.

But all that changed a few months back when I joined a new company that required me to drive to a bustling tech hub, Whitefield, that can make even the most battle-hardened of the road warriors to start sweating and trembling. The roads are in pathetic condition (not much of an aberration in Bangalore really, but perhaps more ignored in that part of the city for some strange reason), the traffic is crazy (thanks in generous part to the ad-hoc planning by civic authorities that ensures buildings after buildings without any open spaces or commensurate amount of infrastructure, thus leading to ultra-high density offices but with just a regular two-lane road to take care of the unending rush-hour traffic!). And when you consider my distance from Whitefield is not more than 13-14 kms but it takes close to 90min of commute one-way, it only seemed to amplify the problems manifold. Each day I came home with mild headache, my hurting left knee and totally exhausted, both mentally and physically.

Sometimes when we are in the middle of doing things that we don't like but still have to do, we somehow put up with it (and the "purpose" and the "passion" keep us going day after day) and they don't appear as bad compared to when someone else points it out. So when Google Maps Timeline sent in my Sep update, I realized the true magnitude and full extent of my office commute:

Spending over 60 hours in the office commute was over 2.5 hours each day, and hardly my long-held idea of fun! Over years, I had learnt to channelize those 2.5-3 hours daily into creative and cognitive pursuits, and thus my frustration was doubly compounded. Most importantly, it was beginning to impact my psyche, and I was sometimes wondering if that was the kind of life I really wanted?

Given that I really loved the opportunity of this new job (I currently work with a great company and love my role, and yes, we are hiring too :), I realized that the daily commute are not going away anytime soon. So, I had to think of something else. Like most (all?) rush-hour officegoers, I too was hooked on to my daily dose of FM radio. These would be nice songs, city updates, prank calls, people dialing in with all kinds of traffic updates, RJ lamenting on the state of road....wait a minute....traffic updates...road conditions? Was that making me more miserable than what I already was? The same traffic updates that told me people how Silk Board junction was once again chocobloc, or the Marathalli traffic was as usual slow-moving was actually turning me into a highly "negative consumer" - someone who was addicted to the daily bad news that he found solace in and escape from daily pains....but was it really that? Or something like drugs...in the retrospective, it was causing more harm to me that I had ever thought of.

So, the first thing I turned off FM and looked up at my smartphone for any inspiration. And there it always was but somehow I never gave it much respect - the podcasts. When at home, I would consume books, blogs, articles or visual media (like TED talks, etc.) but never gave much respect to the podcasts, but it looked promising - put on a 52minute TED Radio hour on NPR or listen to an HBR Ideacast while commuting.

Literally within days, I found my daily misery melting away. I was not only learning new stuff everyday (once again!), but also not subjected to the daily misery in the form of traffic updates on FM. By the following week, I was enthusiastically looking forward to listening to podcasts so much that before starting from home, I would spend a minute to choose and select the one I wanted on a given day. Finally I also decided to invest in high-quality bone-conduction headphones that gave me crystal-clear sound while making sure I still had my ears to the traffic, both literally and metaphorically.

Earlier I had to get inside a vehicle to get to work, and the very act of being confined inside a vehicle for over 60 hours a month was a punishment against my free will. Now, I get inside a vehicle to listen to podcasts. I exercise my free will to decide what do I want to learn today, and it is only incidental that by the time a podcast finishes, I am at my destination. It is still the same physical daily pain, it is still the same chaos, the honking and the noise and the pollution and the potholes, but mentally, I have not only made peace with a situation that I can't really change, but even prevailed upon it exercising my free will that lets me simply ignore the pesky daily commute! I have managed to create a positive psychosomatic condition where by training my mind, I am able to direct my body to respond much more positively to the same conditions that caused me physical pain hitherto.

I hope Google Maps has a "smart" way to figure out if while siting in my vehicle, am I actually killing my life or making the most out of it! I hope my next monthly update will read "...more than 60 hours invested in learning this month".

I now only wish my daily office commute was a bit longer....I could then listen to two podcasts each morning :)