The observation
For work I often have to go to see my clients all around the city and sometimes even outside of it. I usually go by car, but a couple of weeks ago I had not finished the report to give to the client, so I decided to go by bus in order to use the traveling time to finish the job.
Although it took a little Longer and I had to leave earlier from home, I could use the time to finish the report and deliver it to the client. Besides, later on the returning journey, I answered a few emails and made a couple of Phone Calls so that when I got home, I could just get some rest.
This was a great surprise for me as I had always considered that going by Public Transportation implied losing much more time than going by car. So after this experience, I decided to do an experiment to determine which was actually the more efficient and effective way of Transportation.
The experiment consisted of tracking the time it took me to go from one place to another for a week by car and for a week by public transportation. I also registered all the things I managed to do during the journeys.
Lengthening the day
After two weeks, I found that although going by car implied less time traveling (40 minutes average to go from home to work), using public transportation was much more Productive. The travel took on average an hour and along the way I could not only listen to music, like I was doing in the car, but I also managed to answer few emails, make some phone calls, organize my schedule and even write this article for example J
I rediscovered a lot of minutes that I can now use better every day, while I also realized how much value lies in knowing how I'm really using my time.Having this information was essential in order to be able to make the decision that is saving me a lot of time and making my days more productive: using public
transportation.
Conclusion
We all have complained about the enormous amount of time we lose when transporting from one place to another and we usually list all the things we could do with that lost time (like reading a book, calling our friends, having a nap...).
It took me only a few days of measuring my time and some reflection to realize that it is possible to get over 3 hours of additional productive time a week by only choosing a longer journey to work.
For work I often have to go to see my clients all around the city and sometimes even outside of it. I usually go by car, but a couple of weeks ago I had not finished the report to give to the client, so I decided to go by bus in order to use the traveling time to finish the job.
Although it took a little Longer and I had to leave earlier from home, I could use the time to finish the report and deliver it to the client. Besides, later on the returning journey, I answered a few emails and made a couple of Phone Calls so that when I got home, I could just get some rest.
This was a great surprise for me as I had always considered that going by Public Transportation implied losing much more time than going by car. So after this experience, I decided to do an experiment to determine which was actually the more efficient and effective way of Transportation.
The experiment consisted of tracking the time it took me to go from one place to another for a week by car and for a week by public transportation. I also registered all the things I managed to do during the journeys.
Lengthening the day
After two weeks, I found that although going by car implied less time traveling (40 minutes average to go from home to work), using public transportation was much more Productive. The travel took on average an hour and along the way I could not only listen to music, like I was doing in the car, but I also managed to answer few emails, make some phone calls, organize my schedule and even write this article for example J
I rediscovered a lot of minutes that I can now use better every day, while I also realized how much value lies in knowing how I'm really using my time.Having this information was essential in order to be able to make the decision that is saving me a lot of time and making my days more productive: using public
| Evaluation of experiment |
Conclusion
We all have complained about the enormous amount of time we lose when transporting from one place to another and we usually list all the things we could do with that lost time (like reading a book, calling our friends, having a nap...).
It took me only a few days of measuring my time and some reflection to realize that it is possible to get over 3 hours of additional productive time a week by only choosing a longer journey to work.
