Commuting is one of those activities that I suspect few people really enjoy.  Indeed, a few years ago, a Californian company went as far as to pay staff to live closer to work so that they’d be less stressed at work.

An Australian project painted a slightly more balanced picture however, with a number of positives and negatives revealed in Commuting Life, which found that commuting can provide people with a degree of personal time, whether it’s to relax or dream, away from the responsibilities of working life.

All a matter of perspective

A recent study highlights the importance of perspective when we look at our commute, with participants who looked on their commute in a positive way being much less affected by it than their more negative peers.

Our perceptions of the commute are typically betrayed by the activities we choose to occupy ourselves with during this time.  For instance, if we distract ourselves by reading or listening to music, it’s likely that we view the commute negatively.

If however we use the commute to focus on the work ahead and thus detach ourselves from the home life we’re leaving, it’s more likely we will view the time as a productive buffer between work and home.

A test of self-control

The research first examined if there was a link between the levels of self-control a person had and their satisfaction levels at work.  They then built on this to test whether this influenced the psychological impact of their commute.

Interestingly, the results did indeed reveal a correlation, with those employees who scored lower on self-control having a much lower opinion of their commute than their more self-controlled peers.  Indeed, the commute was also more likely to be cited as a factor should these individuals quit their job.

This hypothesis was then supported by a second study that found that self-control had a big impact on our ability to switch between personal and professional mode, and therefore the subsequent emotional stress and exhaustion caused by our work life.

Of course, self-control is far from a fixed trait, and many studies previously have shown that our levels of self-control are influenced by our tiredness and other similar factors.

Indeed, the study even revealed that employees could be gently nudged into more productive behaviors on their commute.  So the message appears to be that if you want your employees to regard their commute positively, then sending a gentle reminder to spend a small portion of it planning their day can do the trick.

Now, as with most things, there is a slight caveat to these findings in that the study only looked at the commute in to work.  There was no examination given to the commute home at the end of the work day, and on strategies we can use to better buffer our work and personal lives.

Given the advantages a happy home life has on our work performance however, that is something that shouldn’t go overlooked.