Everyone says commutes are miserable, wasted time and everyone is absolutely wrong. Commutes can be extremely productive parts of your day when you understand how to leverage them. Obviously those commuting by public transportation are at an advantage (many of the same advantages can be gained from carpooling). The things you can do while using public transportation or carpooling should be obvious. I’ll save the time and focus on how to make the time that you spend driving and commuting valuable.
Making a commute productive, or at least an enhancement to your life instead of a detriment, boils down to two steps: planning and execution. You have to identify how much time you have and then plan within that boundary what you can actually accomplish.
Planning
How do you know what to plan? Reflect on your goals, values, and vision for yourself. Where do you want to be in five years? In three? What do you need to accomplish specifically in the next twelve months to set yourself on that path? Expose yourself to media that will bring you there. You’re going to spend a lot of time commuting. People BEG to have time where no one is asking them to do anything. The least you can do is let future you have a vote on how that time is spent. On the more current side of things- think about who you want to be today.
What does that person do in spite of having a commute like yours? Are they informed about current events? Make sure sure download some news stories to listen to. Are they up on the latest sports news? Make sure you have that prepared. Setting out a plan and subsequently knowing who you are today, who you want to be today and what you want the future to be will make your commute a gigantic investment in yourself. Reframe that thinking from a curse into a privilege. Your commute can set you free if you’re willing to make it so.
After you’ve done this thinking you will have a clearer picture of what your commute plan will look like. Take the vision and goals you’ve come up with and find media that complements it. You should save podcasts, audiobooks and YouTube videos (obviously don’t watch videos while you’re driving but YouTube Premium allows you to download videos for watching or listening without an internet connection).
Execution and review
Follow this plan for at least a week at a time so you can see at a high level what you should have learned at the end of the week, then at the end of the week review that plan to determine what stuck and what didn’t. This is the easiest and most effective way to learn anything and commuting is a perfect application of it. You can delve more deeply into this method here. It usually takes me three listens of an audiobook to retain and recall it quickly on account of my attention being called away while driving.
The Bottom Line
So, to sum up, if you want to be productive during your commute then you need to have a plan. You need a plan for who you want to be as well as a plan for what you want to achieve. Use that lens to review media available to you and make a plan to consume that media on your commute for a week. After the week is through review that plan and determine if you met the plan and how much of the material you wanted to learn you’ve retained. Don’t worry if it wasn’t 100%, you will need multiple exposures to retain everything.