Most of us don’t think much about a short drive to work. If we drive 15 to 20 miles, it may not seem like that much of a commute. And if it’s less than that, then we probably hardly counted it at all when we moved into our home or evaluated that aspect of our current job. However, a short distance during “off hours” for traffic can turn into a nightmare during high-volume traffic times of day. All that sitting and waiting, stopping and starting, and idling could be costing you a lot more than you think.

Commuting has a lot of costs outside of the monetary ones that we often don’t factor in. Assume, for the moment, that you know what terrible gas mileage you’re getting because of all the traffic  and you understand the wear and tear on your car that the odometer won’t reflect because it doesn’t tally minutes sitting and idling – and all too often, overheating! Let’s look at the other costs of commuting that I know I, for one, did not even notice until I started telecommuting several days a week:

Fatigue
It sounds crazy, but sitting in traffic will wear you out! This leads to less energy for the family and interferes with your focus when you finally get to work. It can also cause you to neglect health issues like daily exercise and healthy eating in exchange for a fast, easy out like fast food and no cardio at all.

Stress
People who sit in traffic on a regular basis, according to some studies, are a full three times more likely to experience heart attacks in their lifetime. Sound overblown? Think about the stress and the utter futility that you experience when you are trapped in your car on the freeway – or even just when you are navigating city streets with low speed limits and lots of twists and turns trying to get to work on time. That is indisputably stress on your heart!

Loss of personal time
You don’t get paid for that commute, and you don’t get much good out of it either. Many people attempt to override this problem by listening to soothing music and trying to relax while they drive or by trying to get some form of work done in the car. Either way, however, it is personal, unpaid time that you put in for work every time you sit in that car and wait for the light to change or the wreck to clear.

This is not designed to make you hate your job and its commute. Rather, I just want you to think about the time and toll that your commute may be taking. Possibly you can work out a way to make that time more useful for yourself or even determine a way to save all sorts of trouble and money by working from home.