How to commute

For the past 2 and a bit years I've had a long driving/train commute for 3 days a week from rural Ireland into Belfast. I'd like to write another post about whether or not you should commute, but if you decide to do one, here is my advice.

Entertainment

Good entertainment is the biggest lever you have for making your commute enjoyable.

Finding good audiobooks, podcasts, music, or radio stations you like is something you should actively prioritise. Literally set aside an hour some evening to listen to 5 minutes of a bunch of podcasts. Being properly immersed in a well told story or listening to hosts with good chemistry chat makes driving enjoyable, I even look forward to my commute for this reason. Good entertainment is the difference between my commute feeling like dead wasted time and it being space for me to relax, enjoy myself, or learn stuff.

If you haven't found a podcast you like, keep searching. The most popular podcasts all kind of have this self-improving life-optimising pop education angle where they don't try to entertain the listener at all but the world of podcasts is enormous and there's really good stuff out there, there's genuinely something for everyone.

Pocket Casts is the best free podcast app by a landslide and it has a solid Android Auto integration.

If you aren't into full albums then commuting is a good opportunity to start. Ask your pretentious friends for recommendations! Commuting expanded the amount of music I love listening to immensely and gave me the space to discover at least a dozen new artists that I love.

If you're spending 10 hours a week alone in your car and you're struggling to find enough good stuff then it absolutely makes sense to pay for stuff. If you like a podcast a lot but they only do 1 episode every few weeks and they have a patreon with more good stuff, then pay for it, it's a no brainer.

Alongside listening to entertaining stuff, I also ring my finacee basically every day on the drive home for 15 minutes or so, sometimes I'll even ring some old friends which is nice.

Navigation and Traffic

Traffic delays are the most stressful part of commuting by a large margin and much of that stress is optional if you have good systems. If you know where and when there is heavy traffic or an accident then you can change your route or leave at a different time, or if you're a hybrid worker, just pick a different day to go in.

The most important aspect to this is using Google Maps. I check Google Maps when I wake up and get a feel for what traffic will be like that day. If traffic's bad then I'll plan around getting the train instead of driving, or I might even work from home that day if it's an option.

If I'm on the road and Google Maps suggests a diversion from the normal route I will almost always take it. I've ignored it a few times only to spend hours in wicked traffic from accidents or roadworks.

It's worth noting that traffic follows patterns week to week and month to month. Tom Tom has very detailed publicly available information about what times of the day and days of the weeks and months of the year has the worst traffic. If you can pick what day you can go to the office and you hate traffic then Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are almost certainly bad days to consistently go in. If you're booking annual leave and you don't have kids, don't take midterm break off work, that's when there's basically no traffic.

Android Auto and Apple CarPlay

A Chinese Android Auto headunit on my car was one of the best things I have ever purchased in my entire life. It was £350, so kind of expensive, and I really relied on my friend Gerard to put it in (I basically held a light while he toiled away at it) but it's so so so worth it. It lets me move between podcasts and music easily, it lets me anticipate bad traffic. I highly recommend getting an aftermarket Android Auto headunit installed if you car doesn't have one, it's so worth it for commuters. It's has been worth thousands of pounds for me.

The most valuable thing it lets me do is drive 25 minutes to the motorway exit for the train station, and then I can make a decision on the go with up-to-date information about how long it would take me to drive straight to work (using real time traffic info) vs take the train.

If your car doesn't have Android Auto and you can't afford one of these then get a nice phone holder so you can at least use Google Maps and bluetooth your phone to your car. The ones that suction to your windscreen are the least finicky.

Other car details

Just a few more things to keep in mind with your car.

You will put a lot of mileage on your car compared to a normal person, just something to keep in mind.

Keeping your car clean and tidy does wonders for your mood.

Bosch windscreen wipers are genuinely much much better than cheap wiper blades.

My car's air conditioning has been broken since I bought it and it makes me hate myself basically every sunny day from May to September...and I live in Ireland. If you live somewhere warmer this is an absolute requirement.

Cruise control makes motorway driving much more comfortable and I use it every day.

Heavy stop start traffic is tiring if you have a manual gear box and I suspect my commute would be somewhat less tiring if I had an automatic car. Everyone I've ever spoken to who has an auto gear box in their car absolutely loves them and swears they'd never go back. Something to keep in mind.

Commuting in winter

Winters in Ireland are long, cold, wet, and very dark. It's actually kind of nice leaving the house and arriving to work when it's still dark and that novelty never goes away fully but commuting is definitely more of a challenge than in summer.

Here's my dos and don'ts:

• Wear gloves on winter mornings, touching the cold steering wheel is very unpleasant.
• A travel cup of tea is a lovely way to start the day. I have tried numerous travel cups and nothing beats the 350ml ones from Smash (they're in Tesco).
• Only ever use all-season windscreen washer fluid, even in summer. Just make a habit of it, there's only 3-4 months that are guaranteed to be frost free in most parts of Ireland anyways.
• Windscreen wash nozzles freeze very easily and during cold snaps they can stay frozen for a week. "Winter" screenwash rated to -5c simply isn't reliable enough for Ireland and certainly not for parts of Scotland and England. Frost hollows, microclimates, and higher elevations exist. Weather forecasts generally underestimate how cold it gets, this is a well known phenomena if you're into gardening.
• Spray deicer that comes in big aerosol bottles is excellent. The stuff that comes in kitchen spray type bottles are useless.
• Driving home in the dark is very tiring. I always get a can of coke for my drive home, and if I'm very tired I will never try to push through. Stopping at a filling station to throw £20 of diesel in the car and buy a snack and a drink is enough to snap me out of being tired.
• Putting in a ton of miles in winter is literally dangerous. Driving on ungritted country roads for an hour in Ireland's very long winters is probably a bad idea.

Public transport

My only advice on public transport is to write out the train's morning time table along with what exact times you need to leave the house to reach each train the time and stick that on your fridge.

Positive mindset

Try to keep a positive mindset. If you are looking for reasons to hate your commute you will find them. On the flip side, be honest with yourself if it's unsustainable.