Compared to my other jobs, which tended to have more like a ~30 minute commute, I feel like I have so much more time in the day. I'm never taking a job where I have to commute again. It sucks the life from me.
Although some opportunities weren't available. The ability to spend essentially 0% of my time commuting for any errands made my life very simple and enjoyable.
I love in Boston now and work for a startup, so there's been quite a stark contrast between my lifestyle in the past year. Luckily I work completely remote now because I told myself then, I would never work or live anywhere that requires me to spend a dozen hours a week driving and doing errand.
I need the ~10 minutes it takes me to talk home from the train station to switch between work mode and be-nice-to-excited-kids mode.
The notion of a commute being beneficial is weird to me. If it takes more than 5 minutes to get to work, I end up spending the time engaged in something else, which leads to me being significantly distracted when I arrive. Thinking for an hour about what to do when you arrive seems like the opposite of productivity