Commute Self-Awareness.

How to transform your daily commute time into a coaching session, for free.

5 min readJan 25, 2016

A few months ago, I was driving to work and after changing the radio station many times hoping for some entertainment, I started to thinking of how I can transform this time into something more productive. My commute time is not bad (20 mins every day). The math is very simple: 20 mins x 2 trips x 5 days x 50 weeks = 10.000 mins or 166 hrs or 6.94 days or 1 week of wasted time every year. WTF? Now, let’s run the math for a 1 hour of commute time = 60 mins x 2 trips x 5 days x 50 weeks = 30.000 mins or 500 hours or 20.8 days or 3 weeks every year, and assuming you will be in that position at least for 2.5yrs, that will be 9 weeks or 2 months of your life wasted on commute time.

Now the question is, Are you fine with wasting this amount of time?

I hope your answer will be no.

Somebody asked Bill Gates about one thing that he’d be happy to spend half of his fortune without hesitation and the answer was very clear:

BUYING TIME.

Success is not about money — it’s about controlling how you spend your time.

Wasting time is the issue I need to fix it in my daily routine. First I came with the idea of create a Periscope channel to share my thoughts every morning on @Entrepreneurship and startups. I recorded some test episodes and what I found out was, if you are driving, that is not a good or a safe idea.

Then Gary Vaynerchuk shared a great post titled: Self-Awareness is your most important attribute.

For Gary Vaynerchuk, Self-awareness is being able to accept your weaknesses while focusing all of your attention on your strengths.

At this time, it was very easy for me to decide how I’ll spend my commute time. As aspirant entrepreneur, developing my self-awareness is the only way to overcome my fears of failure and to create the mental state to jump off the cliff. I’ll use this time listening any audio-book that could help me develop my self-awareness skill.

Audio books are fascinating to me, first because you can listen without interruptions, and second, most the time, they are being read by the author, and when you are alone in your car, just driving and listen, that feels like an 1 x 1 coaching session with Gary Vaynerchuk, Malcolm Gladwell, Jack Welch, Deepak Chopra or Anthony Robbins and the best part was that it cost me $0.00 as I borrowed all these audio-books from the Canadian public library.

After 6 months of Commute Self-Awareness practice, these are the audio-books I already listened to:

Excuses Begone!
[how to Change Lifelong, Self-defeating Thinking Habits]
By Dyer, Wayne W.

What Are You Hungry For?
[the Chopra Solution to Permanent Weight Loss, Well-being, and Lightness of Soul]
Chopra, Deepak

The Ultimate Happiness Prescription
[7 Keys to Joy and Enlightenment]
Chopra, Deepak

Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul
[how to Create A New You]
By Chopra, Deepak

The Real-life MBA
[your No-BS Guide to Winning the Game, Building A Team, and Growing your Career
Welch, Jack

Made to Stick
[why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die]
Heath, Chip

Powertalk!
Problems: your Friend or Foe
Anthony Robbins

David and Goliath
Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants
Gladwell, Malcolm

The Tipping Point
[how Little Things Can Make A Big Difference]
Gladwell, Malcolm

Crush It!
Why Now Is the Time to Cash in on your Passion
By Vaynerchuk, Gary

I already listen 10 audio books, or one book every 2.4 weeks (at 8.3 hours per book approx.) . For my annual commute time, that will be 20 new books this year or 60 new books a year for 1hour commuter. That’s awesome!

My conclusion is that this practice infuses me with new ideas, helps me understand myself better and finally create self-awareness because it’s like a coaching session with the best people on the market, every single day, for free.

You can change the topic if self-awareness is not relevant for you, but the point is that you shouldn’t waste your time. It will never return to you, even if you have all the money in the world. Ask Bill.

Time is the most important asset you have, make that every minute count, for good.

Let me know what you think about this post. Would love to hear your thoughts. Like this post? Great! Follow me here on Medium or over on Twitter @solanojuan. It would be cool if you hit “Recommend” on this post too. Thanks!

More posts from J.P. Solano:

Commute Self-Awareness.

How to transform your daily commute time into a coaching session, for free.

Time is the most important asset you have, make that every minute count, for good.

Written by J. P. Solano

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