More time optimization
According to a study I saw a while back but don’t feel like linking to, Americans spend an average of 46 minutes commuting to and from work every day. Mine is nearly double that on a typical day. I live in Central and work in one of the United Plaza buildings off Essen, which is a 35-minute commute in the morning. If I leave at 5 or 6, it’s about an hour getting home.
I don’t mind it, usually; I have my music and my thoughts. But on other days, slow traffic gets under my skin in the worst way. Part of it is my constant need for productivity. I’m not talking about active productivity like getting work done, paying the bills, taking care of much needed car maintenance, etc. That’s all part of it, but I would consider taking a short nap, watching a good movie or a new episode of my favorite shows, drinking a beer and relaxing to be productive if done in moderation. There’s just something that irks me about spending nearly 10% of my waking day driving.
One of my most recent productivity goals is to start reading for pleasure again. I’m about 5 years out of practice with that. Fortunately, with the advent of audiobooks, reading — or at least getting through — a book is one of the few things that can be done (somewhat) safely while driving.
 I’ve been acquiring* deemed-worthy novels that have been read aloud and recorded, unabridged, and playing them on the drive to and from work. It took less than a week of daily commuting to get through “Rosemary’s Baby” by Ira Levin.
Next up is “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley and then Orwell’s “1984.” There are a lot of everyone’s-read-it novels that I’ve somehow missed throughout school; I may search for an audiobook version of “Dune” after I finish the aforementioned books.
I recommend trying it if your commute is more than an hour long. The average pace of the reading seems to be 10,000 words an hour. “Rosemary’s Baby” is approximately 60,000 words long, with six audiobook discs at about an hour each. ”Brave New World” is a similar length. This translates to a book per workweek commute for me.
But these are relatively short novels by today’s mainstream standards. For example, the first “Harry Potter” book was just under 80,000 words long, and each new book was longer than the last. The final book of the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” is about 200,000 words long. With my pace estimate of 10,000 wph, Deathly Hallows would be a 20-hour listen and take me just over three weeks of commuting to complete. Likewise, Stephen King’s “The Stand,” at over 470,000 words, would take me close to a couple of months to get through. That is, if I were only to listen to it in the car. For lengthier books, I will probably go to the library and check out the book so I can get out of the car, pick up where the tape left off, and read it faster at home.
I know a lot of avid readers would never dream of listening to a book. I’ll agree that with actually reading a book, there’s the benefit of holding the book in your hand, seeing the text, reading at your own pace (i.e. much faster), visualizing the construction of the language, etc. But it doesn’t bother me; it’s quite possibly the most personally fulfilling use of commuting time I’ve ever experienced.
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*audiobooks are available at your local library, on rental Web sites such as audiobookworm.com, or on other download sites with members who may or may not offer them legally.
