One of the most
important skills required for someone who has to spend a lot of time travelling
everyday is the ability to convince oneself that it really is “the gift of time”.
It turns out, however, that when you have so many ways to kill time, such a
gift really can’t be taken lightly. So I set about my optimisation exercise
like I often do (somewhat unnecessarily). Of course I was only concerned with
making optimal use of the time I spent travelling because that was the only “additional
gift” I perceived – the rest of it was wasted exactly as before.
I took this
optimisation exercise rather seriously so I constantly tried to read faster on
the metro so that I wouldn’t have to carry the book around for too long (I’m
not sure what my reasoning was for this because I always replaced it with an
equally heavy book). While changing trains I’d hurriedly create playlists while
running up the stairs, often running into people or nearly falling down. I
was something of a nuisance to other passengers. All this running around was,
of course, to pretend that I was following some sort of exercise regimen. I
also wanted to minimise travel time because I did recognise that everything I
did on the metro was just very organised time wasting.
I started
planning fastidiously for the next day’s commute, often spending more time
planning than I did travelling. My plans were overambitious. I almost always
fell short of my goals and I would get off the metro thoroughly exhausted,
relieved to have reached home/college so that I could waste time out of my
pre-existing quota in a more regular fashion.
I try not to optimise too much these days. There's a time and place for everything.
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