Commute to Work at Home
Reconceptualising commutes as ‘transition time which gladdens your heart’.
With so many people now working from home, let’s reflect upon what was wrong with normal and redesign it to better serve our needs. The time sentenced to travel to work now reduced for so many, consider ways to create your ideal transition-journey to gladden the heart both before settling to work, and leaving it behind you gladly at the end of the day. Happy lockdown to one and all.
With 2020’s pandemic, now more than ever we have to do our best to sustain ourselves — our health, our foundations, our connections — so that we can continue to serve. It’s easy to feel isolated, an 11-hour time difference separates my colleagues and I. Last week I set my alarm at 3:20am on Tuesday and Wednesday and 2:37am on Thursday. Working from home I sorely miss connecting with my friends and colleagues. At the same time, the risks associated with COVID-19 prevent or severely limit opportunities to meet or interact with local communities, which can be especially challenging for those living in places they’ve just moved to, perhaps unexpectedly. I falter almost daily. I take sick leave almost weekly. I’ve mandated snoozes into my daily working life. I tell myself I am enough, I am enough, I am enough and I often don’t believe it. How can I make the best of this? How can I make today great?
The amount of life’s time you are willing to spend commuting is determined by you, as are the range of activities available to you during it. If there are 226 working days a year, even a 2-way 20-minutes commute is 9040 minutes commuting per year, that’s more than 150 hours, or 6.25 days. Make sure that this time gladdens your heart. Not needing to travel a physical distance doesn’t prevent you from doing so anyway. Mental journeys can also be commutes. Find what suits you best to transition to and from work, wherever you are.
Commute
verb — (1) travel some distance between one’s home and place of work on a regular basis.
verb — (2) reduce (a judicial sentence, especially a sentence of death) to another less severe one
noun — a regular journey of some distance to and from one’s place of work
Oxford Languages
Whatever the means, commutes can be glorious, monstrous, or somewhere between — the choice is yours. Bicycle, trains, rides with others, walking…my commutes have never been solo car driving. Each day squished into the suited mosh-pit of Tokyo’s subway rush hour, my love for the universe depleted. I could accept it on occasion but certainly not as part of my daily routine — a change of job or living location would be necessary. On trains, buses and other public transport, some people listen to audiobooks, learn languages, or complete a bunch of mundane low-thinking tasks. Staring out a train window or observing your fellow passengers are also worthy pursuits. In Pohnpei, my commute consisted of walking in the direction of work until a taxi, friend or colleague picked me up. I never knew who I might be riding with that day but it was consistent enough to get me to work on time. Walking, cycling, or sharing commutes weave joyful encounters and connections into your day.
Transitioning Between Work and Unwork
Experiment with different ways to separate work from the home environment in which you do it. I use a tuning fork to mark the start and end of my working day with sound. Sometimes I have a stay-at-home body-mind combo commute — 20 minutes hula-hoop, 20 minutes stretchy-yoga, and 20-minutes meditation or reading. Unfortunately this doesn’t fulfil my daylight needs and I can feel quite isolated not interacting with people or nature most of the day. Sometimes I get driven with my bicycle in the car so I can enjoy a 7-mile cycle back home. Cycles through countryside radically alter my mind-body state. I notice the leaves changing colour, the dusting of fine rain on my face, the deceptive warm or cold of the day that I wouldn’t have known if I’d jumped straight behind my computer. When I start the day moving outside, I share my existence with a pheasant, a rabbit, a cow, and recently, two topiary rhinoceroses. A friend recommended covering my work station with a sheet at the end of the day. In the past, walking after work helped flush the working day from my mind whereas now, an evening run serves that same purpose.
Why not try to (re)design your commute as a wonderful transition time in and out of work. When commutes gladden your heart, you may find yourself wanting longer commutes than ever!
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