How to Drive Up the Ladder of Success - a podcast by Tami North

Show Notes for Genuine Driven Women Episode #18

On today’s show we talk about how you can drive up the ladder of success while you are stuck in traffic.   

According to the 2012-2016 American Community Survey 5-year estimates, the average commute time for people in the US is 26.1minutes and rising.  The definition of a “commuter” is anyone who does not work at home.  In some highly populated areas, the average commute times are as high as 40+ minutes. If this is the average, it means there are a LOT of people who commute for a much longer time. Also, in some cities, up to 31% of their population commutes via public transportation. There is another category, they are called “Super Commuters.”  They spend 90 minutes or more, each way, commuting to work. In a lot of cases, these people will frequently rent a very cheap room or studio apartment and stay overnight during the work week.  

According to a Zillow Study in 2015, commute times for higher-income earners hasn’t changed too much over the past 10 years, but commutes are getting longer and longer for low-income workers. This is primarily because affordable housing is getting pushed farther and farther out from high economic centers or job locations. The most important thing all of this data is telling us is that there is a very high chance that you could be spending 10% of your waking hours commuting to and from work.

There are some ways you could reduce your commuting time:

•     Move closer to work
•     Change jobs
•     Work out a flex-time schedule with your company
•     Telecommuting
•     Become an entrepreneur and start your own at home business

While all of these options may offer some relief, the reality is that a lot of you will continue to be commuters, so it is important to come to terms with that and find ways to make it a much more enjoyable experience and start to look at it as an opportunity.

You can use that commute as a one of the tools in your transformation to who you want to be 2, 5, or ten years from now.  

The reality is that women, especially Driven Women, are much more impacted by their commute than men are. Your commute may cause you stress or other health related concerns.  

The impact of constant stress on our health is discussed every day in the news.

In a study titled, “Developments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being,” published in the Winter 2006 edition of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, there is a report about “a day in the life” of 909 employed women in Texas.

There are a couple of important components to increasing how you feel about your commute:  Autonomy (a feeling a freedom) and how connected you feel while commuting.

1.  Autonomy, as it relates to commuting:

A Harvard Business Review article, “Reclaim your commute” discussed that you should “focus on what you can control: how you spend your time during the trip.”  

2.  Feeling Connected while commuting:  

Using Waze or other traffic applications:  “Waze specifically enables commuters to share real-time user-generated travel information such as traffic jams, police, accident, hazard, chit chat, and other.” Waze will reroute you if a better route is found while you are in transit.  

 

How you can directly impact your success at work with an improvement in how you spend your time while you are commuting.

In a study titled, “Commuting as Role Transitions: How Trait Self-Control and Work-related Prospection Offset Negative Effects of Lengthy Commutes,” by Jon M. Jachimowicz and Julia L. Lee, they found that “people with higher degrees of self-control use their commute to more effectively transition from their home to their work role, and consequently are less adversely affected by the commuting experience.”

And, conversely - that people with low self-control are negatively affected by their commutes.  

Here are ten (10) ideas, along with some tools that will help you use your commute to drive yourself up the ladder of success:

 

1. Planning your day – main goals, conversations you need to have
2. Use tools such as Apple’s Siri or Google’s voice assistant to go over your calendar.
3. Use tools such as Evernote’s dictation feature to capture to-do’s or ideas you have while you are driving.   
4. Use a workflow application to set up an automatic workflow of some of these tasks so you can accomplish them completely hands free.
5. Listen to Podcasts and audiobooks, these will allow you to drive while Learning new ideas or skills.
6. Brainstorm ideas on something that has been challenging you
7. Practice your introduction if you need to give a brief to a large group
8. Learn to speak a new language.
9. Clearing your head
10. Setting your mindset, one example is to make a playlist of music based on mood, energetic, motivational, driven, etc.  

I have an example of a “Genuine Driven Women” Playlist on Spotify that you may enjoy.

You spend way too much of your valuable time commuting to not spend some of it planning for the better version of you.  Your future self will thank you for the time you spend today!

Time Machine:  

In this segment each week we will give a few points about women that have accomplished a lot! We also will discuss a bit about what was happening to women during the time periods. Someone we think you would like to know more about is:

Queen Elizabeth II

Inspirational Quote of the Week:

 

“Beware of monotony; it’s the mother of all the deadly sins.”

-Edith Wharton

 

Check out the FREE 3-Day networking course by Minerva Management Partners, LLC mentioned in this section.

 

We genuinely Want to know! (Listener questions and feedback)

Are you driven to succeed? Email us at genuinedrivenwomen@gmail.com or call us at (724) DRIVEN-2 or  (724) 374-8362 and leave a voice message. We’ll use your voicemails on a future podcast!  

We’d love for you to take a couple minutes to write a review on iTunes, which will help us to reach our goal to connect with girls, young ladies, and women who need just this kind of inspiration each week.

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You can also follow us on Facebook at Facebook.com/genuinedrivenwomen/ to join the conversation, get to know us better, and to find about all the new things we will be announcing in the months to come.

Further episodes of The Introverted Executive

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