The Ideal Work Commute Will Make You Happier and Healthier

I work for 6 hours a week (35 to 40 minutes for one way, 5 days a week) for commuting, so this question is most important to me.

Especially since I am proud of time management, the idea of ​​spending a lot of commuting time is troublesome.

But obviously I am not alone - according to the US Census Bureau, Americans take more than 100 hours a year, most workers over two weeks (80 hours) are taking an annual leave.

In the United States, the average one way driving time is about 25.5 minutes, and the "mega burst" time of over 600,000 American workers is at least 90 minutes.

Imagine all the unpaid work hours that workers enter and leave the workplace (not to mention jobs that were generally useless at the time).

To make matters worse, research shows that there is a direct connection between commuting time and happiness - the person with the longest commute time has the lowest overall satisfaction with life.

If the commuting time is long, the time runs short, you get into a traffic jam and you worry about missing activities, the pressure level will rise. It is not surprising to know that long distance commuting is related to rising blood pressure.

In fact, everyday commuting is the second thing Americans hate everyday (only doing housework), and if you shorten your commute time by one hour you get happiness equivalent to $ 40,000. Improve

Clearly, Americans (including myself) are taking too much time to work, which has an adverse effect on our health and happiness.

In a large-scale survey of over 1,000 workers in San Francisco, the ideal one way commute time was actually 16 minutes (less than 2% is less than 4 minutes commute time, less than 2% is nighttime I wanted working time) commuting time). This is consistent with other studies showing that most people do not want to make commuting times less than 15 minutes. I agree that about 15 minutes is ideal.

Regarding commuting satisfaction, riding a commuter train or riding a bicycle is also a better choice than driving.

Driving is a much more intense commuting means, but unfortunately it is also the most common. People traveling by public transportation (5.2%), walking (2.8%), cycling (0.6%) still make up a small percentage of the total number of workers.

Even those using public transportation, the happiest part of the round trip to work is a round-trip to the train and bus. According to the survey, aggressive commuting may be as important as marriage or raise.

Even if no one can do this, we should all approach work and build some physical activity in the process.

Andrew Meyer wrote about living well, including happiness, health, productivity, and a successful habit. Subscribe to his email list at andrewmerle.com and contact him on Twitter

If billions of dollars of money and tens of thousands of deaths can not convince you, research has also found that walking or cycling to work will make you more happy and more productive It was. According to a study, if commuting time is reduced by 20 minutes, a raise of 19% will be possible. This is definitely achievable when you get close to work and spend peak hours. When discussing cycling, people are generally concerned that it is more dangerous than driving. Unfortunately, this can not be calculated because there is no reliable data on how many miles you run every year. Therefore, we need to return to the first principle. As vehicles travel at higher speeds and higher speeds, the risk of injury and property damage is usually higher for non-passengers. By improving small infrastructure such as protected bicycle lane, bicycle will be 10 times safer than current

Driving a bicycle by everyday commuting is not easy, but its advantages are very big. I am more happy and healthier than ever. I run about 8 miles a day, but most of the time I am on my way home from work. Some of my day was not distracted, obliged, screened, talked, or laughed (because it happened naturally).