2026-05-07
Commute time is your best work time
"Wow Erik you live 140km from Brussels and you come to the office 2 to 3 times a week? 😨"
Hell yeah. And I even found myself more productive on office days thanks to these long commute times (2x 90 minutes per office day). It really just depends on a few tweaks in how you see commute time:
1️⃣ Be organized
→ I have a "train backlog" that I populate upfront, so that my 6:30 brain doesn't need to dig its mid-term memory to assess what to do. I trust my list.
2️⃣ Be aware of the technical constraint:
→ Avoid work that requires a stable connection (Miro, Teams recording stream...). It will make you smash your laptop against the window
3️⃣ Target train-friendly work:
→ Work that requires uninterrupted focus time (because it's literally what a train ride is)
→ Monkey work that you could do while sipping your coffee or peeking through the window
→ Get ready for the meetings of the day: pre-reads, pre-meeting guidance, any prep counts!
Commute time is not a gap between home and office. My best work sometimes happens at 6:51 before I'm even reaching Liège-Guillemins. No interruptions, coffee just kicked in, first dopamine hit from moving the first bad boy to Done. So what do YOU do with yours? 😊
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Funny, I have the same approach as you! Sometimes I snap out of my focus because the train stops, and I suddenly have to close my laptop to run out of the train 😅
When I tell people about me working on the train, most say they aren't able to do it. I believe it is time well spent. If I were to travel by car, that is simply time wasted.
Jan-Willem
My commute is ~2 hours one way, but only 50 minutes of those are on an uninterrupted train segment.
Indeed, it is very useful to spend that time on work. My biggest challenge with this is when there is an unestimatable piece of focus work and then you need another 10 minutes to wrap it up, but it's your station already 😄 In the end, I try to avoid such tasks on the train, despite the environment there fits them better than a busy office.
Artem