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Making Driving Enjoyable (Or At Least Less Unenjoyable)

If you've ever lived in Texas, you've probably heard the joke: "you can drive in any direction for 8 hours and you'll still be in Texas!" While cliche, it is true: to get between any worthwhile city (Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio), it takes a fair amount of driving. Even getting somewhere within those cities can take a while due to gross congestion. Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio are the 9th, 7th, and 4th largest cities in the U.S.

Driving is a necessary evil (unless you're driving a really fun car, then it's an optional luxury!) in the U.S., so why not try to make it as enjoyable as possible? (Of course, it is a luxury to us at all times—having to rely on public transport here is the true evil.)

Time and Stress
Improvements
See Also

Time and Stress

The average American's commute time is 26 minutes (label "Mean travel time to work (minutes)"), giving a grand total of:

\[\text{total driving} = 52 \, \text{min/day} \times 250 \, \text{day/year} = 13000 \, \text{min/year} = 215 \, \text{hr/year}\]

And this is just commuting time! It doesn't include time spent driving to grocery shopping, social gathering, etc., which adds a significant amount of hours to the commute total (by my personal experience and estimation, it would be 50+, or 1 hour per week).

Further, driving—especially commuting—is generally a stressful activity as shown in the literature (there are many more examples than the two below):

Commuting Takes Its Toll: The benefits people associate with living far from work (better job in terms of pay and/or interest, living in a better area, better schools for children or work for partner) are outweighed by the detriments resulting from the commute.
Commuting: "The Stress That Doesn't Pay": Detriments to our social and mental health caused by commuting.

But why is driving so stressful? I see a few reasons:

Attention: You have to (and should be) be paying attention the entire time while driving. This can put people on edge.
Helplessness: There's nothing you can do about sitting in traffic.
Time: For the most part, driving is fruitless in and of itself. It gets us where we need to go, but much slower than we would ideally like to get there.

Improvements

Below are some practices that can improve or replace (for the better) the driving experience.

Listening

Podcasts are now both extremely popular and accessible. They provide stories, knowledge, laughs, and a host of other content, virtually guaranteeing there's something for everyone. A few podcast recommendations:

nonprophet: My personal favorite.
Joe Rogan Experience: While some things Rogan says are not-so-smart, he does interview some incredibly interesting guests.
80,0000 Hours: Conversations about the world's most pressing problems and how you can use your career to solve them.
Doing Good Better (Effective Altruism): How to make the most of altruism.
Jocko Podcast: Similar to Joe in not-so-smart statements and cringey "motivation vs. discipline" talk, but there is useful information and interesting guests.
Hardcore History: Discussions about world events or time periods. Reviews here and here and here.

Audiobooks are another listening option. A few options:

Libby: Rent audiobooks (and ebooks) from local libraries.
Local libraries: Rent audiobook CD sets.
Audible: Audiobook service by Amazon. $8/month gets full access to "select audiobooks, Audible Originals, podcasts", while $15/month adds one credit (one book) per month of any title in the premium selection.

Socialization

Two options exist for socializing while driving:

Phone calling: Call friends or family members while driving. They will enjoy hearing from you and it makes the time go by faster. In regards to activity association, it can go one of two ways: either you 1) associate driving with calling friends, or 2) associate calling friends with driving. The former option is the more positive of the two: calling friends increases driving's fun factor. The latter option is worse: driving decreases friend-calling's fun factor. In my experience of doing this for a few years, I receive the more positive association.
Carpooling: You now have a companion to talk to while on the drive to and/or from work or on longer drives between cities.

Mindset

Surprisingly, forcing a positive mindset towards driving has made me enjoy driving more. I tell myself before long trips "this trip will feel short and I will enjoy the time spent driving [whether listening to podcasts/music/books or talking to friends]" and somehow it ends up being a still-negative-but-much-more-enjoyable trip.