I had the same experience when I lived in NYC. A 45 minute commute on the subway was a lot less stressful than the 45 minute bumper-to-bumper driving commute I do now (in Seattle). I would usually play mindless puzzle games and listen to music on my commute. Other people mention the train delays being stressful, but my company had a standing "subway delays ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" attitude about showing up late. People would show up between 9:30 and 10:30

I don't ever recall feeling comfortable pulling out a laptop on the train though. Not even for fear of someone stealing it. I'd be worried about a subway monkey doing some spinning dance move and destroying the screen, or some hipster spilling coffee on it when the train slows down. Fond memories...

An interesting lifehack I hypothesized earlier this week and confirmed today is to work from home for the first hour or so of the day and then head into work after the morning rush has substantially subsided.

Until today, I've typically gotten on the subway between 9:45am and 10am for my 30 minute commute to work (that's bed to desk travel time). The train usually wasn't packed, but I was certainly squeezed up against people. Perfectly tolerable, but certainly not comfortable.

Today I did an hour's worth of work from 9:30am to 10:30am and then I commuted to my office arriving just before my 11am standup. The 10:30am train was wonderfully empty in comparison to the 9:45am train. I got a seat for the first time in months! Furthermore, that hour of work was wonderfully productive since my apt is dead silent and no one was around to disturb me. I got most of my "heads-down, high-concentration" work done for the day in that hour.

I live in Japan and have done this last year to great effect.

My work place is about an hour and a half commute and the trains are incredibly packed starting from around 7am all the way till 9.15am.

What I've done was wake up and started working from home sometime between 7-8am till around 9.15am, then leave for the 9.30am train and I'll be in the office by 11.

Work gets done and I don't get stressed from silly crowds. I also do the reverse and leave work around 4pm to avoid the return rush.

It's a small change but it's an incredible quality of live improvement. This is literal pareto, 20% effort with 80% effect. Do it.

Doing the same in Paris. 1-2 hours at home and then go in. Leave work later though 7-7:30 pm to available for US west coast people

I've done this in London where the tube can get impossible in peak hours, and it worked pretty well, although I ended up moving 30 minutes walk from the office to get 1 hour walk every day. The downside was a bit of back pain for carring the laptop on my backpack for one hour every day.

I had a similar problem with back pain. Invest in a good backpack that fits properly and try to minimize any other weight, including the backpack itself. I found a timbuk2 bag that worked for me, but go into a store and try one one with your laptop in it. You’ll feel the difference right away if it’s right.

I used to live in Renton (by Boeing) and commute into downtown Seattle (5th and Union) and found the light rail in was a good way to deal with it. Over time I found myself using my motorcycle more because I could use the HOV lanes and adjusting my work schedule to get in around 6 and leave by 3:30 (in theory) which went from a guaranteed hour each way to as little as 25min in the morning and about 40 in the afternoon.

Spent a lot of money on REALLY good rain gear and averaged almost 8K mi a year for the four of the five years we were up there. As long as I wasn’t stopped in traffic I felt even more relaxed getting a good motorcycle ride in every morning and being actively zoned out (focused on now instead of life) vs taking the train and being passively zones out with media.

Now that I’m 4mi from my office, come home a few times a week and say hi to the wife at lunch, etc. I will also never go back to anything resembling a commute.

I always think about the distance from my house to my work place in terms of kilometres. It only now occurs to me it’s pretty much exactly 1 mile, and only one set of traffic lights.

Living in a city with approximately 100,000 people has its advantages!

Well, as someone who pulls out their laptop pretty frequently on the train, I can say I've never had anyone spill coffee or kick it, though granted I don't pull it out if the train is at-all crowded.

I recently got a GPD Win 2 as well though, so I've been able to do more computerey stuff lately, even when it is crowded.

The GPD Win 2 looks interesting. Can you tell us more about it.

I had the original GPD Win (second revision) and its a quite capable travel computer. I loved the using the two thumb typing grip (which I had perfected from the iPad mini and iPhone 3S ~ 5s landscape) even though the keyboard wasn't so great. My main other gripe was the low screen resolution. The keyboard has been improved in the GPD Win 2 but the resolution stayed the same (I understand why given the target audience but 720p limits it to gamers). I stopped using my GPD Win after the battery swelled up (and Chinese 'warranty' as my third complaint) but despite its flaws I miss it dearly and I'm considering getting a GPD MicroPC soon

I can’t speak for the Win 2, but the Micro PC’s keyboard is miles ahead of the Win’s. I would never use the original Win for terminal work if I had a choice; I have used the Micro PC for it.

DisplayPort output via USB-C is another plus (monitor/mouse/keyboard/charging with one cable!) though the Win 2 may have had that as well, I’m not sure. The original Win did not.

The GPD Win 2 is pretty sweet; I have Ubuntu installed on mine, and it makes a more-than-capable coding machine, even while standing up.

Same, Crown Heights to Midtown. Would time my commute so I could get a seat and pull out my laptop to just code with no emails or other stuff coming in. Probably some of the most productive time. You just have to be good with heading in early and living far enough away to get on subways when they are relatively empty further out from Manhattan.

I commute about 45 mins on the subway in NYC and I don’t really feel comfortable taking my laptop out. Which sucks because it’s a lot of time and I’ve got stuff I could work on.

What I’m experimenting with now is taking Uber Pool most mornings. It’s usually about $20 but you can pay for it with tax free commuter benefits, and I’m saving $2.75 in subway fare, so it’s like ~$10 for almost an hour of time to catch up on administrative junk for my side biz. Seems worth it so far, although still a little frustrating.

I’ve never pulled a laptop out on the subway but the LIRR or MNR is a different story.

I have occasionally used a laptop on an NJT train. Usually I don't have space (when I even get a seat).

Now I take the bus, and I never have space at least not for my work laptop. I should have gotten the 13" instead of the 15".

I sometimes hardly ever have room to pull out my phone during rush hour on the train. Packed like sardines. And they say everyone drives in LA...

I’m born and raised in NYC and took subways and trains to work everyday for over a decade in NYC.

I mostly agree with you...but...I found the past several years of subway outages worse and started driving/ridesharing more and more. I’ve had times where subways constantly get rerouted, suddenly go express, skip stops, run on different lines, etc. it became so maddening.

All it takes is one time being stuck in the tunnel for 1.5 hrs in crowded train car and you have pretty much permanent PTSD. I have a panic attack every time the train comes to a premature stop even for a minute.

> All it takes is one time being stuck in the tunnel for 1.5 hrs in crowded train car and you have pretty much permanent PTSD. I have a panic attack every time the train comes to a premature stop even for a minute.

I used to take the Path trail from Jersey City and then transfer to the F trail to Queens. I let my boss think I love my job so much that I arrive at work pretty early on most days when in fact, I was just trying to account for the inevitable delays on some days.

I understand worker safety is important. Even if we didn't care about the workers, accidents can get very expensive and budget is tight. However, there has to be a better way than slowing ALL tracks to a crawl every time there is track work on ANY of the tracks.

That really sucks, but I don't think this applies to a lot of people.

Not sure what GP meant but in NYC I find NJ Transit, Metro North, LIRR style to be much more relaxing and reliable. Subway is just a different beast

I take the Subway virtually every day. On weekdays it's not perfect, but generally good-enough.

It depends a lot on your origin and destination. In my 6 years, I’ve found the optimal corridor to be Downtown Brooklyn to Midtown, with a slight bias for west manhattan over east. Anything outside that corridor has a high potential to be the Wild West (the G, L, JZM, etc) with kafkaesque reroutes and delays and express running local and no trains after 9pm on random 5 days every 9 weeks.

To some extent it likely depends on which subway you're on. Some lines are rough, especially at the outskirts.

But I agree. For all that New Yorkers complain about the subway, it's my favorite thing about New York.

Bad Subway is better than no subway; I wish we had that or any public transport in Northern California.

I lived in NYC from 2001-2012 and much prefer my 20-minute car commute now to any amount of time in a jam-packed rush-hour subway. Nothing like being 5mm from a stranger's face while both of you pretend you're not 5mm from a stranger's face. The LIRR is more comfy obv but at $250/month still not worth the aggravation, and unless you happen to work at Penn Station, you still have to walk through rain/snow/95-degree humidity or buy _another_ pass for a subway/bus.

I agree the average American 20 min house to office drive is much less stressful than rush hour subway (and god help us if we get coronavirus going around). Driving to work in NYC or SF doesn’t even make sense unless there was parking.

Yup. Being on a train is only a location not an activity. Like any other location it can be made more or less comfortable, I've been on a train where the heating failed; and one that was so crowded you could hardly breathe (last train home for the night so nobody was willing to miss out) but I've also been comfortably asleep in bed; eaten a decent (not award winning, but certainly reasonable even for a restaurant that wasn't hurtling though the countryside at a hundred miles per hour) meal; and watched some good movies on Netflix.

My previous job was a 1:20 commute by bike and train up to SF. I got really excited about a new job opportunity only a 20-30 minute drive from my house, but now that I've been at this job for almost a year I often miss the train commute. Commuting by car really is much more stressful.

Caltrain is great as long as it shows up. But it is a single point of failure for many commutes and it does fail a lot.