Here are two life situations for you to choose between. (1) You live near your place of work. Let's say it's a 10-minute walk away and through a park even. (2) You don't live near your place of work. You must travel, let's say by tube, an hour or more every day.
You choose (1), right? Not necessarily. Or at least not according to the study reported here. For you shouldn't overlook '"transition time" to adjust to... different roles at home and at work'.
Sensible travellers make the most of their journey by unwinding with a good book, playing games on a mobile phone, listening to music or watching a DVD on a laptop.This is a demonstration of the fact that however preposterous an idea might be, there'll be someone to argue for it. You can also rejoice at being locked up for hours in a very small room and treat that as a gift. But it's better not to be locked in the room, since you have more choices then, and if you so wish you can go into the room voluntarily, close the door and sit there doing what you would have done if you'd been forcibly locked in and had to make the most of that. In the same way, if your journey to work is only 10 minutes and you want an hour of 'transition time', whether to read, to think, or to stare blankly at the back of someone's head, you can indulge in any of those activities in the time you save from commuting.At peak times, when passengers are packed in so tightly that staring out of the window is the only way to pass the time, they should rejoice. This is priceless "quality thinking" time.
Glenn Lyons, who led the research, said: "Travel is assumed to be the price paid for reaching the destination. However, this apparent burden of travel can be viewed quite differently: as a gift.
"The gift can take the form of the sensation of travel itself: the pulsing train passing through changing landscapes. It can also take the form of transition time and time out..."
Anyway, I'll save the idea to try out on passengers on the Northern line next time I'm squashed in amongst them during a rush hour.