Making the Most of Your Commute

At Serviced City Pads we know a thing or two about business travel, as many of our clients use our Corporate Booking Service to organise their accommodation. So we want to know, how can you make the most of your time on the road?

Every single one of us, bar the lucky few who are able to work from home, commutes to work each day. This commute can be as short as a ten minute bus ride, as long as an hour on the train or even as far as a few hundred miles in the car.

It’s easy to forget that this time is our own, bolting it on to our office-hours and hoping that it just flits by as quickly as possible. But instead of viewing our commutes as wasted space, what if we made the effort to turn that time into a period for self reflection, growth and mental stimulation? These are a few things you could do during the daily trek to work:

1. Read
Before you proclaim “Well that’s obvious” be honest with yourself about how much, or how often, you actually read during your commute. Some people can get through the entire works of Tolkien during a weeks worth of bus rides, but personally I always struggle to concentrate. So how can you read without reading? Try audiobooks. Download a novel or two to your iPod or Kindle then sit back, relax and rest your eyes.

For short journeys, why not expand your literary horizons and read a few poems, a magazine article, or even a graphic novel?

2. Learn a Language
Before you next go on holiday, use your commuting time to brush up your language skills or even learn a new foreign language entirely from scratch. There are many audio guides which will help you to be speaking Spanish, French or German within a fortnight – or pick up a phrase book, download an app and get absorbing those key phrases before your flight takes off.

3. Catch Up
Don’t spend your commute starring at your smartphone with blurring eyes and a growing headache, stop hitting refresh on Facebook and call someone you love, or just someone you like! You could have a worthwhile conversation during your commute no matter how you travel – by train, plane or auto-mobile. Just remember to invest in a hands-free set if you want to chat and drive.

4. Exercise
Is there a healthier way you could be getting to and from work? The time you spend sitting on the bus could be put to better use if you decided to walk or cycle to your office. Even getting off a few stops earlier and treating yourself to a refreshing stroll could revitalise your day.

5. Make Something
Don’t mock the man who sits knitting on the bus, you might feel smug for a moment, but by the end of the month he’ll have a new jumper and you’ll still be feeling bored every morning. If you drive, taking up a hobby on your way to work might be a bit tricky (though you could practice singing) and you might not fancy testing out any new dance steps on the train – but you could draw, write, edit photographs or even make yourself a lovely new pair of earrings. The possibilities are endless, just use your imagination.

When you’re travelling to a city, make the most of the time you spend getting there, we want you to be stress free and ready to relax by the time you arrive at your serviced apartment.