It’s 4 am and I enviously look at my soundly asleep mother while I rush to leave the house at 6 am or I miss the train. I sit amidst sweaty armpits for an hour waiting to reach college, come back home the same route—tired—so I pick sleep over assignments; repeat. A friend of mine asked, “you just sit in one place and reach your destination; why are you so tired?” It’s baffling, yes, to think that commuting—simply ‘going someplace’—has an enormous effect on our well-being.
Commuting is a stressor. It elicits the natural “fight or flight” response that is triggered when you encounter a threat or challenge. Being evicted from your apartment and being late to college are both stressful situations but of different types. Although the latter may seem acute in nature, over time, it could be detrimental. The body adapts to stress with the general adaptation syndrome: the body’s coping mechanisms that adapt to stress become weak with time which makes it vulnerable to illness. This implies that commuting regularly could bring harm to our bodies.
More importantly, our mental health can suffer alongside our physical from commute stress. Research indicates a slight decline in commuters’ mental health with increasing travel durations. As more time is spent commuting, the time you would have used to recover from commute and work by practicing a hobby or spending time with your friends and family is reduced. In other words, your exposure to the stressful stimulus has increased, thus, increasing the intensity of its effect. Moreover, the amount of time spent commuting frustrates you since you believe your time is ‘wasted’ and that, at that moment, you could be doing something else: finishing an assignment or comfortably binging Netflix.
Similar to duration, one’s commute mode is a major factor in determining how commuting affects the individual. One’s entire travel experience can significantly depend on the mode of commute: the comfortable air-conditioned Uber versus the stuffy humid local train. Unsurprisingly, individuals report being the happiest traveling by China’s grand employer shuttle buses while being the unhappiest with regular city buses; this suggests concern for commute’s effect on their overall happiness in life as well. Examining broader concepts like active travel (involving physical activity, e.g., cycling) versus passive travel (you are simply taken to your destination, e.g., car, public transport) also demonstrates drastic differences in commuters’ mental health; the former is associated with improved well-being.
Interestingly, commute does not affect men and women equally. Long commute hours affect women more than men despite their generally shorter working hours. Women—especially mothers—bear the burden of domestic work and consequently undergo the daily time fixity constraint: the psychological burden from the numerous stops women may add on their way home from commuting like grocery shopping, childcare pick-up, etc.
On the brighter side, although stress is inevitable and our body’s coping mechanisms may weaken, we can mitigate its effects strategically. We can take direct action to remove or escape the stressor; for instance, changing the commute mode or moving closer to the work location. Another way is palliative coping wherein we use cognitive approaches by adjusting our internal environment. This includes relaxing, meditating, realistically appraising the stressor, and even learning to adopt an internal locus of control (the belief that our own choices and actions shape our reality, as opposed to external forces like fate).
Moreover, despite the negative effects of commuting, it can be considered an important part of our routine. In accordance with the boundary theory (our “home” and “work” lives have boundaries with each having distinct roles for us), commute can act as a “ritual” that allows us to psychologically transition from our personal to our work roles and better maintain their boundaries. This phenomenon can be seen when many of us missed our daily commute as our home and work lives blended during the pandemic.
Nevertheless, systems of commute must be improved. On a national level, this includes aspects like adding more bus stops, improving train interiors, or making comfortable transit more affordable. On an organizational level, options for flexible work hours and facilities like China’s employee shuttle could be provided by the organization as poor commute experiences often lead to organizational consequences like tardiness, absenteeism—even reduced job satisfaction—which, in turn, affect the nation as a whole.
In conclusion, although commuting can aid us in highlighting the psychological boundaries between our work and personal roles, it is important that individuals are informed of its “ripple effect” on their lives—which is understated in daily chatter—and take measures to mitigate the effect of commute on their well-being.
Paranshi Zaveri
