How to find time to learn after work (2017)
<i>&gt;&quot;For example, I’m commuting every day 2×45 minutes to my workplace and back home. I need 5 minutes to get to the train station with my bike, 10 minutes to wait for the (connecting) trains, 25 minutes actually on the trains, 5 minutes to get from the train to my working place&quot;</i><p>There&#x27;s a big one right there. Time lost due to commute times are actually much longer than the door-to-door time.<p>It&#x27;s not just the 90 min that you&#x27;re loosing with the commute, it&#x27;s also the context switching before and after the commute: checking the weather outside to select the right clothing, getting dressed with the right attire that fits(unless you forgot to do the laundry), grooming and looking sharp before you go out (gotta brush off the dried dirt of the shoes from yesterday&#x27;s rain), walking around your campus&#x2F;building between your office and coffe-machine&#x2F;water cooler to hydrate, setting up your laptop&#x2F;desk to get in the zone, walking around looking for meeting rooms, all this adds up on top of those 90 min to more like 120 minutes or even more.<p>That&#x27;s 2h&#x2F;day, or, if we assume 8h work and 8h sleep, that&#x27;s 25% of your leisure time left lost for nothing, just to go to work and back. Just let that sink in. 25%! A quarter! One fourth! Even though in practice it&#x27;s worse than that as 8h of work doesn&#x27;t include the mandatory unpaid  (in my corner of Europe) 30min-1h lunch break, so you&#x27;re not left with much leisure time between work and sleep.<p>And for me, 25 minutes on the train are not enough time for to get in the zone to actually study and learn something. By the time I get in the zone, I already need to start packing my stuff and get ready to board off the train. Trying to cram study into a short train ride brings me more stress than it&#x27;s worth so I&#x27;d probably end up scrolling on HN&#x2F;reddit in that short time on the train.<p>With WFH I can save a huge amount of time by bypassing all these dead times that don&#x27;t benefit me and nor do they benefit the company I work for. It&#x27;s just time wasted that&#x27;s unproductive to both parties. I can quickly jump into work after I wake up, and I can quickly jump off work when I&#x27;m done and dive directly into my hobbies.<p>I wish companies would understand this and not see WFH as a tool or justification for slacking off, forcings everyone commute every day to waste everyone&#x27;s time justifying some mystical &quot;team bonding&quot; that happens in the office that boosts everyone&#x27;s productivity.<p>&#x2F;rant over