Twice a week, I travel into London for work, which takes two hours each way. What is the best use of my time on the train? Should I see it as an extension of my office and continue to do project work? Should I save it for the mundane but important stuff like filing emails? Should I improve my CV by learning Spanish? Or should I chill out and watch The Wire? My family thinks I’m a McNulty-obsessed workaholic at the best of times, and kick up a fuss if I do any of these outside office hours.
Management consultant, female, 44

Lucy’s answer

You should watch The Wire. Not merely because it will give you the most pleasure – it will give your family most pleasure, too. I’m married to a workaholic just like you. I tolerate the endless hours hunched over the computer. But what I don’t tolerate are the further hours hunched over the TV watching The Wire. Work is work and I have a respect for it. I have no respect for this wretched series that is so proud of being realistic that you can’t understand what anyone is saying.

There is a lot of The Wire, but not enough to fill eight hours a week – which raises the problem of what to do with the rest of your time on the train. The reason this is a problem is because we don’t really know if a commute is work or home. It feels a bit like work, as we don’t do it voluntarily, but we do it in our own time. I suggest you solve the problem by using your management consulting skills and draw three columns and label them Work, Commute and Home. Write down all the things that can be done in each. Sleeping can be done on the train and at home but not, usually, in the office. Most work tasks can be done in all three. You’ll find the nicest home tasks – seeing family and friends, dancing, gardening, and so on can be done only at home. So, the aim is to use the hours on the train to release as much time as possible to do things at home. See it as the place for computer games, ringing the plumber, paying bills and so on. Don’t use it for work e-mails unless that means you will be able to spend more time at home. Otherwise you simply free up time at work that you will then fritter away pointlessly.

And whatever you do, do not spend time improving your CV. It sounds as if your CV is fine as it is.

June 18, 2009 1:53am in Dear Lucy | Comment