Productivity

There was a long time that I thought my hour long commute each way to work was a fantastic waste of time.  Just think of the things that I could be doing or the fun I could be having if I didn’t have this enforced confinement twice a day, five days a week 48 weeks a year (hurrah for 4 weeks of vacation!).

I could be getting in another hour of exercise before work or even getting to work earlier to get some quiet time before the crush.  I could be getting home earlier to help my kids with homework or even getting some of those house chores done in daylight.

Life is full of could haves and should haves and its best to make do with what we’ve got.  When I realized that commuting was going to be my lot I developed a skill that has made the 480 hours a year into something that I can point to with some pride.  I can read just about anywhere.  There was a time when I commuted in a shared taxi 45 minutes each way on twisty roads.  I learned to read on this ride by starting out slowly.  Read 5 minutes and put the book down.  The next day I read for 8 minutes and so on until I never got the nauseous feeling again.

Last year I read 54 full length books.  That’s about average for me.  Some years it’s 60 and some as low as  48.  In the 14 years I’ve been on my current job I’ve read over 600 books!  I mix it up; I read picks from the New York Times Book Review, some non-fiction and something older and classic.  I’ve recently purchased a Kindle 2 reader and am completing my first (classic) on that.  In case you are interested I’m reading Coal Town by Upton Sinclair.  The Kindle is a marvelous invention built for commuters like us.  More on that in a different post.