Live Close to Work

I was talking to my girlfriend on the phone tonight, and for some reason we were talking about commuting to work and the time it would take for different commutes.  Well, since the commute to my summer/winter job is pretty far (1 hr, 15 minutes each way), I decided to figure out how much time I would end up wasting in a given year.

Since the commute is 2.5 hrs round trip, or 150 minutes per day, and assuming I work 260 days out of the year (a high estimate), I will spend 39,000 minutes, or 650 hours, or 27.08 days commuting every year.  That is enough time to go on a very, very long vacation, or do many other things.

It would be really great if I could cut my commute in half.  If it only took 1.25 hours each way, I would save over 13 days per year in wasted time!

The thing about commuting is, it sucks.  I would rather do anything except commute.  I would rather be sitting at a desk doing the most boring work in the world than sitting on a train, bus, or in a car.  Thus, I have decided that when I graduate from law school (assuming I get in), I’m definitely going to find out where I’m going to work before I find out where I’m going to live.  There is no way I will ever take a job that is permanent that requires me to spend 27.08 days per year commuting.

On a related note, what would happen to the US economy if everyone lived closer to work?  What if everyone’s commute were magically reduced to five minutes?  Assuming that people still slack off the same amount (people would probably slack off more), eliminating commutes could do wonders for the economy in terms of productivity.  Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be possible, with the exception of everyone telecommuting (which is still pretty cool) or some sort of crazy transportation innovation that we haven’t thought of yet.  Anyways, just thought I would post this since I was thinking about it.