The most valuable commodity we have in this life is time. This is a theme that recurs time and time again in my posts. With that being said, to practice minimizing when it comes to time, one would reduce time spent doing activities that do not add value to their life while maximizing time spent doing activities that DO add value to their life. Simple, right? (rhetorical)

Commuting is a big part of that. Our regular daily commutes that is. Most of us average folk get up in the morning, get ready, grab a quick bite for breakfast, then head out to our job. When our work day is over, we commute back home again. We do this five days a week almost every week of the year (holidays and vacation aside).

When we add it all up the commuting part of our day is quite a significant portion of our lives. So is it worth it? Is it worth so much time away from our families to work where we do? …… Depends. It depends on how long the commute is, how much we make at our job, if our job gives us any sense of purpose (a career). For most of us our jobs are actual work, so lets assume its not a career.

Work: definition – Time one spends doing an activity when they would rather be doing something else.

 

Lets start with the length of our commute.

 

In this day and age I still know many people who live here in mid-state NY that commute to the city everyday to go to work. Always I am compelled to ask “WHY?!”, “Why deal with such a long commute.” Always the answer is: “I make sooo much more money there.” I can’t help but think …. “really?” I doubt they really did the math.

Lets say that somebody scores a fabulous job at 100,000/year (Wahh Hooo), but they have to commute 1.5 hours to work one way (this is common). This means technically they are commuting 3 hours a day in addition to their 8 hour work day. That’s 11 of work per day. Make no mistake, that IS 3 hours of work. So this person works 11(hours)*5(days)*52(weeks) = 2,860 hours a year. This is $100K/2,860 = $34.97 an hour.

If they were working a non-commuting job at that rate their yearly pay would be $34.97*40(hours)*52(weeks) = $72,727.27. So in actuality Mr. six figure salary only really makes $73K a year, it just turns out to be $100,000 with all the “overtime” they are putting in.

This person would be better off taking a job making $73K a year close to home, as it would give them back 3(hours)*5(days a week)*52(Weeks) = 780 hours per year of their life back to spend on activities that add value to their life. Family time perhaps.

Oh, and we have not even considered that the commute itself costs money. I recall on my city trip that a round trip train ticket is $37 for off peak (job travel will be ON PEAK, so this is a generous number). $37*5(days)*52(weeks) = $9,620 a year in travel alone. If someone drives for their commute instead, there is gas, parking, and wear and tare on the vehicle. With all of that, I promise it will be no less than an additional $5,000 a year.

In the end, It’s rarely even worth it. Time is so much more valuable than money.

 

It may even be worth considering when deciding to live in a building apartment. People tend to favor living up on a high floor in an apartment building as opposed to a ground floor. I think it’s because they like the view. But do they consider the consequences? Keep in mind, the time it takes to get from the front door the building to the front door of the apartment is part of every commute that a resident makes. Lets suppose it takes 30 seconds to get from the building door to the apartment door for someone who lives on the ground floor. Let us also suppose it takes 1:30 minutes to get from the building door to the apartment door for someone who lives on the 10th floor. For the sake of simplicity lets assume this person only does one commute per day. 1(minute)*7(days a week)*52(weeks) = 6 hours additionally per year just on building transit. Is having a good view worth 6 hours per year of our life? Maybe, maybe not.

 

Going back to Mr. Six Figures up above. I’d like to ask him a question: “Would you spend $27K to get 780 hours(32.5 days) of free time back?”I think he would pay. I have known too many executives that wish they could spend more time with their family. Keep in mind that the 32.5 days is truly FREE time. No sleep and no eating needed, as those are already accounted for in the time they have presently in their normal day when they are not commuting.

 

This is the thinking of a minimalist.

I recently had a conversation with a good friend of mine (lets just call him Ziggy), Where Ziggy and I were trying to come up with the most selfish act a person can do ……. and has done. His best submission was awesome.

He recalled that in ancient Egypt it was standard practice that when a pharaoh died, all his subjects and material possessions would be buried with him. All the subjects would be killed of course. The idea was that the pharaoh would attain these possessions, and the subjects would continue to serve him in the afterlife. Wooooow, that is evil selfish. The number of subjects a pharaoh had was uncountable, and those people would be murdered just so the one guy could have the same abundance in an alleged afterlife.

This was tough to top, but I believe I did “one up” Ziggy. And what is more, is that my submission was more common and even simpler than his. It is my belief that the most selfish action (or actually inaction) a person can do is to not elect to have their body donated to science, to medicine when they die. …… That’s it.

Ziggy was a bit confused, just as you may be now, as to why that is anymore selfish than the whole pharaoh situation. He said “A pharaoh’s slaves are guaranteed to be killed Anthony! The worst that can happen in the donor situation is that one little kid doesn’t get his liver in time, and dies because you wouldn’t part with your liver. Potentially one kid vs a guaranteed 100 minimum killed.”

I clarified by telling him that the he is rating the selfishness factor incorrectly because he is only looking at the potential loss/gain of all the second party, and not focusing also on the first party (the alleged selfish person). I went on to say that the Selfish Factor should be an equation or ratio expressed as follows:

 

SELFISH FACTOR = (MAXIMUM POTENTIAL GAIN OF 2ND PARTY SHOULD HE CHOOSE NOT TO DO THE SELFISH ACT)/(MAXIMUM POTENTIAL GAIN OF 1ST PARTY SHOULD HE CHOOSE TO DO THE SELFISH ACT)

 

So lets rate “potential gain” on a scale from 0 to 10.

Personally, for my scale, both 1 life saved and 100 lives saved rate at 10 …… but for the sake of argument lets rate little Timmy and his new liver at 5. We will obviously rate the 100+ subjects lives being saved at 10.

Being that the belief in Egypt at the time was that there IS an afterlife and ALL the things pharaoh is buried with follow with him there, the pharaoh stands to have a serious gain. Not a life saving gain …… but a gain certainly of wealth. Lets rate this at a 1 (I am going low to play devils advocate here).

Now here is the kicker. A person who chooses not to have their body donated to medicine stands to gain ……… nothing …….. because they’re dead. I can only imagine that the reason they are choosing not to donate is for some satisfaction of their ego right now of knowing that their rotting corpse is whole in the dirt somewhere (idk). But that still doesn’t matter because by the time they cross that bridge in life ….. they have no life ….. and therefore no ego. Unfortunately the way math works we can not plug a “0” into the denominator of the equation because that would make it undefined. So lets just say “approaching 0” or:      (–>0).

 

So:

Pharaoh selfish factor = 10/1= 10 (seemingly the max possible selfish score)

but

Body donation selfish factor = 5/(–>0)= (–> INFINITE)

So basically what I am saying is that the most selfish of the selfish, are people who won’t donate their bodies to medicine when they die. In fact, we should use this as a guide for determining peoples characters when deciding who we choose to surround ourselves with. Getting to know somebody, ask them if they elected to have their body donated to science when they die. If they purposefully decided not to, you kinda already know all you need to know about them. “It’s been a pleasure talking to you, but I don’t see this going anywhere.”