Making the Most of Commuting: How to Avoid Stress Before, During or After Work

I stumbled upon a webpage by author Gina Mollicone-Long, who wrote "Think or Sink, The One Choice that Changes Everything" and one paragraph on her webpage caught my eye. By the way, this is not an endorsement and I am not an affiliate, these are just my personal observations of a forward thinker who inspired me to write today. Here's the part of the paragraph which stuck out:

"THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS STRESS!
Some people consider crawling along in traffic an opportunity to listen to their favorite music or relax and do their best thinking. For others, traffic is a nightmare that will ruin their entire day."

The reason it got my full attention is that I discovered, many years ago, that if I am going to be stuck in traffic, why should I waste time trying to move ahead of gridlock and stress myself out for no good reason? Why not just 'go with the flow' and use that time to my advantage? So, that's what I did; I changed my perspective.

Driving the mean streets of Toronto

Toronto can be quite crazy to drive around at the best of times. There's a running joke in my family that, in order to get on the highway to visit my sister, which is only a half hour's drive, I have to make it out of Toronto, which can be anywhere from a half hour to an hour, depending on many factors. So, to me it's about a 1.5 hour drive.

That being said, since the time I was a full time driver in my late 20's (mid 1990's), I have seen the roads go from bad to worse. In fact, driving around delivering blueprints and picking up orders for the print shop I worked at meant a lot of time in traffic and thus an opportunity to further my education while driving. So, I often pulled over to a corner store and bought a $5.00 'learn as you drive' tape and even went shopping downtown to a 'books on tape' store, where I could get philosophy, business, motivation, inspiration or whatever I wanted to listen to on a regular basis. In fact, I wanted them to keep me on the road for more pick-ups if I could avoid going back to the shop, where I couldn't listen to my stuff.

The business tapes really fired me up every time I listened to them and eventually I gave my notice to start my desired career. In a sense, that driving job was one of the best things for me, it allowed me time to be alone and get educated while I was working.

Stacking boxes and being left alone

Back in early 1995, when I was working in shipping and receiving, I was the head receiver working under my supervisor, who seemed to understand where I was coming from. In my constant need for change to sustain myself at positions I didn't entirely enjoy, I often took a 'break' by going to the warehouse to stack boxes so I could be alone with my thoughts. On occasion, I'd even forget to take a formal break.

Working alone, doing physical labor that didn't involve a dangerous surrounding (important point here), I could think of the many things I wanted to accomplish and could work on my plans after I quit (I was almost 'quit' in my head by that time, after 6.5 years). Needless to say, I got a lot more done at that position than anybody could ever imagine.

Final statement

So, I totally agree with the idea that a person's predicament is based on their perspective and nobody should feel too trapped or stressed because there is always an option that suits one better - if you look around and find it. Thinking of new ideas is about the hardest thing I ever find myself doing because executing the ideas is relatively painless.

In short, I like when people use the word 'think' and that's why my upcoming book series is called think WORK not JOB.

- Buck Moore