According to The Texas Transportation Institute the average commuter in large centers spends an additional 36 hours per year in traffic because of congestion. The time wasted in traffic used to be limited to those in large cities. According to the Institute this is now moved to medium-sized cities. What’s wrong with this picture?
Obviously we, collectively, haven’t learned from our history. That’s probably not surprising to most of us as we’re still fighting wars, large and small, even though history tells us wars don’t generally accomplish a great deal.
In North America we have the mentality there’s lots of space and we should use it to build cities, roads, subdivisions, and, should time and money allow, the occasional man made park or lake. Why haven’t we learned to build the transportation arteries and systems first so the millions of dollars wasted in idling cars and squandered time cease to grow? Who knows we might even plan so we use what Mother Nature gave us for parks and recreational areas, rather than building our own.
I recognize we can’t change the time many people have to spend in their daily commutes. Here are three quick suggestions to help those commutes be more beneficial to you.
- Listen to books on CD or any other material you can find at the local library or purchase from your favorite record store.
- Use the time to dictate information you can use at work, at home, or in your community. Small recording devices with good microphones are readily available and can be used hands-free.
- Invest in dictation software for your computer as most of these programs will transcribe your recorded messages so you have a soft copy on your computer to edit and print.
I write most of my blog posts using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It’s reasonably priced and each version is more user-friendly and accurate than the last.
If my three options don’t fit with your lifestyle, just recognizing you have the commute, it takes time, and you need to relax, will make the journey less stressful on your body.
Garth Roberts www.GarthRoberts.com