Hi folks! I may be facing a situation where I have to commute by driving 2.5 hours each direction on a daily basis. Since I will be driving, I can’t read or study anything from a book, but I want to do more than just listen to the radio or books on tape for 5 hours every day. Sooo, teeming millions, pleas suggest something valuable I can do with my time commuting!
That is a crazy ass commute, but I recommend you pick a language, get some CDs or something, and start learning.
It’s not really a great idea to “do” too many things while you’re driving. I’d recommend focusing on the road so you don’t get into an accident, and then once you get home looking into places you can move to so as not to have such a ridiculous commute.
On Safety: My experience with long commutes is that doing something with my mind actually makes me a safer driver. It’s when I’m not listening to an audiobook or whatever that my brain will just go into auto-pilot mode, or I’ll get sleepy, and less responsive.
But it’s tough to do anything other than audio. If you’re the kind of person who can talk to people while driving, there’s a whole world of things you can do with a phone–from catching up with old friends, to making calls on behalf of your favorite non-profit, to earning some money.
In terms of non-audio…get a grip strength trainer? Be like the trucker in Over the Top who has some cable weights hooked up to get his right arm massive!
Oh, that reminds me. There’s always Kegel exercises. 
My commute (about 110 miles) is 2 ½ hours each way. Sometimes more. Fortunately, I telecommute three days a week. (And my boss came up for the wedding, so she can almost fully appreciate the drive. She did get a little taste of the traffic, but not much.)
I listen to NPR. Unfortunately there’s only one NPR station up here, and when it’s not playing NPR or local stories, it plays jazz. When I lived in L.A. (and had a much shorter commute), I had three stations that played NPR and they had different programming between. So I end up hearing the same stories two, three, or four times a day.
Kegels. Grip strength.
Thigh-master. Tongue exercises. Glute squeezes.
You’ll be ready for the key party in no time!
The first, obvious, suggestion is music. Not just the radio, but actually using the time to discover new music. Speaking for myself, music is my life, but I cannot even tell you how many years it’s been since I’ve listened to the radio. I make a point of trying to discover a minimum of one new artist a week and now that I have a longer commute with my new job, I have plans to start using that time to listen to new albums.
Aside from books on tape, there’s also podcasts and lectures. It really doesn’t matter what your interest is, there’s podcasts on virtually every topic and many of them even have daily shows of an hour or more. I don’t generally listen to podcasts, but I know that several of the youtube channels I follow that discuss everything from movies and video games to the latest in science or philosophy have podcast versions of their discussions.
Another good use of the time for me is actually just really thinking through stuff. I love philosophical musing or even just working through issues in my own life. Sometimes it’s difficult to just find time to sit there and think about stuff undisturbed, but I can get some time to just pick a big issue and just attack it when I’m driving. I’ve had a lot of really good ideas, or even other things, like gotten work done on poems or lyrics, or some melodies for songs I’m working on
I think the idea of learning a language is a good one, if it’s something you’re interested in. In some cases, there’s exercises that you can work on too. My brother used to keep a fingering thing for guitar playing in his car. As mentioned above, you can do some grip training, or possibly some other hand or dexterity exercises. Or see if you can schedule some phone time while you’re driving, catching up with friends and family, handling business you’d otherwise have to do at home or whatever. Personally, I hate talking on the phone in the car, but if I have to make a business call, since I tend to have an earlier schedule, I can usually catch people if I call them on my way home.
I like this, a lot.
Just in case it’s been awhile since you looked into what’s available, “books on tape” mostly aren’t on tape any more, and there’s a much, much wider selection of audiobooks available nowadays than there used to be (not to mention lectures, podcasts, audio dramas, etc.).
Sirius has some good stations with news, old time radio shows, contemporary issues, etc. Not deep enough to interrupt your concentration on driving, yet enough to add some entertainment. I’d definitely invest in that if I was spending 5 hours a day in a car.
Practice your singing. However, if you’re the type that sings with your eyes closed then forget about it.
You listen to a song repeatedly until you’ve learned to sing it verbatim. Although, it would be good to look up the lyrics of the songs the night before because a lot of singers sound like enunciation is for squares.
I like this even more, although my wife may not. She could still benefit from the exercises though.
There was time that I did a 2-hour commute for over a year, 2-3 times in a work week. This was before Sirius was common. I listened to Jim Cramer’s stock show (till I found out that if he was talking about a stock move it had already happened), Dave Ramsey, NPR, and there was an NPR station halfway home that started playing oldtime radio mysteries as the sun set. I got really familiar with X Minus One.
I would look into motels near work, try to find a cheaper one where you can spend a night once in a while to help with the insane drive time. That should save close to 5 hours of driving, plus save on the gas and car expenses which will help offset the cost of the room.
Get a hand free phone, call a real estate agent and move closer to your workplace.
There are lots of good reasons people commute long distances. One of them isn’t that it never occurred to them to move closer.
This thread needs to meet this other thread.
Granted. But I’ve always been impressed by how often people rule out the move before they even rationally evaluate it.
The other risk is a temporary commute that slowly becomes permanent. That’s rife in my industry and I talk with those guys on many, many workdays.
They never intended to commute for more than a few months, but somehow there was always some temporary uncertainly which made the next 6 months a particularly bad time to consider moving. 20 years later they’re still traveling halfway across the country to go to work, while the suburb they live in is no different than the ones available 45 minutes from work.
You’re only alive once; don’t waste 20% of it driving / flying the same route over and over to no real benefit.