Published: May 17, 2016 12:00:00 PM

100-years-of-solitude-cover.jpgThe commute has not been eliminated from business. We still live in one place and work in another. We still wake up in the morning and move to that workplace almost at the same time as everyone else doing the same. We still step on and over one another on this twice-daily journey on overcrowded roads and quintuple-undersized public transit buses and trains.

Commuting, in the words of my grandfather, is as fun as goblins nipping at your balls.

We still must do it because of puritanical expectations within our society that demand we all be inconvenienced at the same time like our pastoral ancestors. The living-death of America's urban rail systems is a conversation for another day because today, I want to talk about the momentary solutions to commuting.

These aren't fixes for city planning. These aren't apps that hack your commute. These are just things to do when you're stacked like a sausage in a package on a truck heading for someplace you hate.

How To Make The Most Of Your Commute

You, reader, can mouse back up to your URL bar and head right back to BuzzFeed or Gawker if you want some saltiness about Millenials on their phones or old people's graceless ability at piloting their Mercedes. These are actual things I've seen or done to make the most of a bad situation while commuting.

Write a blog post every morning.

I'm not writing this on my phone right now, but I have written thousands of words on my phone that have become blog posts. Before my cellphone had data or a touchscreen, I'd write posts using the keypad and save them as email drafts, which I could access when I got home. A lot of them were good! Most were terrible! The point is that when you're on a bus or a train, you're half awake. That semi-conscous state is optimal for imagination. People spend hundreds on yoga classes and medication to achieve that dream-state of accelerated creativity you're reaching every morning. So take advantage and write something.

Read a book on the train.

Books are the best. I'm bad at reading them because I have trouble focusing for extended periods of time. My eyes are also bad. That's why I consider ebooks a godsend. E-readers are light, cheap, and can have their font-size manipulated. If you want a more tacticle experience, get An Actual Book. People on the bus or train will try to get a look at your choice in literature, so now's your chance to prove you're either cool enough to know the trends (Game of Thrones), or cool enough to be a trendsetter (Suns Go Dark). You'd be surprised how quickly you can read a book when you have two 40-70 minute sessions of uninterrupted focus.

Only issue, books are a two-handed weapon on a commute. When you're crammed into a tight space, you don't always have the dexterity to manipulate a book. Which brings us to.

Listen to podcasts.

It's like talk radio, except with less cocaine and more passion. Most regular podcasts are the host's true passion in life. If you don't sense that in whatever you're listening to, find another podcast. They're everywhere. If you have an iPhone, you have the podcast app already. If you have an Android phone, the Google Play Music app has the podcasts. Or get a third-party app like BeyondPod. Ever since Serial, podcasts have reached mainstream social conversations. You can tune in and out of them on a commute. Recommended.

Music.

It's music! I'd advise Spotify or a service that gets music onto your device. Avoid streaming music when you can. Data charges on your phone network are built to extract money from customers. That's why you pay a customer's price for the data you use.

Get a gaming device. Get a 3DS or a Vita.

Eighty-nine percent of the games on your phone were designed to extract microtransactions from your sleepy butt. If you had money to spend on that, you wouldn't be commuting on public transit. So get a dedicated gaming device. If you feel insecure about being a grown-up holding a pink Nintendo handheld, that lady over there is reading a 50 Shades of Grey hardcover. Which of you has their shit together more?

What Not To Do On Your Commute

Don't talk to people on public transit.

Unless the conversation develops organically with somebody you already know, nobody is socially obligated to strike up a conversation on a commute, nor should you feel motivated to do so. Talking to strangers on a commute is intrusive and harassing. Don't ever do it. Leave that girl alone.

Avoid checking your work email on the bus.

Unless totally vital to figure out your day's schedule, don't check your work email on your commute. The commute hours belong to you. If you establish precedent that you're "on the clock," as they say, during the time you're on a bus, you'll only be a half-functioning employee. Nobody is impressed you farted a sloppy one-handed email from your phone. Odds are it won't matter. All you've done is waste your own time and set the standard that you're paying attention to your job while sandwiched in some stranger's armpit.

Try not to stream TV shows.

You can never really absorb it. It's two-sense activity, three if you count holding the device. If it's some simple comedy show, e.g. Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt, it's not a hard-no, but do you honestly think you're having a good time watching last night's Game of Thrones on HBO Go through the Monday morning glare? All the Jon Snow stuff will be impossible to see. I'd advise against the TV stuff. There's plenty more to do. You're going to watch that TV at some point.

Focus on what you have access to during the commuting hours. To your advantage, you're alone, isolated, and there are no true expectations of you. Take some you-time to read, write, or just listen.

Until we figure out how to build a hyper-loop, it's the best we've got.

-- @Alex Crumb

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