8 hours of sleep plus 8 hours of work leaves 8 voluntary hours. You could make a case then that 2 hours of commute is giving up on a fourth of your weekday free time. Factor in the prep for commute or time needed afterwards to decompress and perhaps a third is more accurate.

It's only 1/8th of your awake time if you don't count weekends.

If you count weekends, you have 5 * 8 + 2 * 16 = 72 hours of "free time". so 5 hrs commute / 32 hrs = 6.94% or 1/14.4 of your time awake.

Yes, I was referring to awake time on weekdays.

Also, I'm not following your calculations. If we establish that your 'free time' is 72 hours per week (8h/weekday and 16h/weekends), and the commute time per week is 10h (2h round trip x 5), it would be 10/72 or roughly 13.9%.

I used to read books during commute. No time was wasted. In fact, now I seem to have a lot less time for reading, because there is always something more pressing at home.

I guess the same can be said about doing laundry, sitting and watching the machine while it does its job would lose you an hour or two. Luckily both of these activities can be done while doing other things like reading/listening to audio books or catching up on other things.

The same thing can't be said about doing laundry. If they are doing the laundry at home like they said, you are sitting and watching the machine, you are starting it and letting it do its thing.

And besides that, laundry is going to have to be done regardless, so its not like they would be saving time by commuting to work instead. The laundry will still be waiting when they get home.

> If they are doing the laundry at home like they said, you are sitting and watching the machine, you are starting it and letting it do its thing

You can do the same way with commuting, enter the bus/subway/train and then do other thing while there, you don't have to wait until you arrive to start doing other things.

> And besides that, laundry is going to have to be done regardless, so its not like they would be saving time by commuting to work instead. The laundry will still be waiting when they get home.

You could have someone else do the laundry for you.

Maybe it was a bad example. I wanted to compare activities that we usually do where you can perform multiple things at the same time. Commuting is generally a passive activity while we wait to arrive to our destination, just like laundry is a passive activity until the machine is done.

> You can do the same way with commuting, enter the bus/subway/train and then do other thing while there, you don't have to wait until you arrive to start doing other things.

In my pre-covid life, I often couldn't even hold a book on the subway as it was too crowded for that. There were times (near daily) I couldn't even reach into my pocket to take my phone out to put on a podcast due to the crush of people (and oh my god the stress when your headphone's cord would get hooked on an exiting passenger).

My commute, while long enough to do something useful, was never useful. Crowded platforms, crowded trains, and transfers down long crowded corridors made it impossible to do anything else. And I'll be damned if I'm going to do more work on the way to and from work!

> You can do the same way with commuting, enter the bus/subway/train and then do other thing while there, you don't have to wait until you arrive to start doing other things.

This works but only in very specific types of commutes. I used to take the train which took 30 minutes each way and I always got a seat, perfect for reading, maybe even light work. Now after almost 2 decades I know that that's the exception and almost always my commute was pretty much wasted (I don't consider listening to music or podcasts productive, it's nice but not productive).

Yes, you can make the most of your commute by listening to audiobooks, etc. But that's so limited in utility compared to having 2 hours of extra free time at home where you can do so much more. It's almost an apples to orange comparison.

Most people's commutes are spent sitting in a car.

Even listening to an audiobook or podcast is such a passive thing it's hard to call it "doing" something.