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Leaving Early May Cost You Time
markmcb writes "OmniNerd has an interesting traffic article demonstrating how leaving early for work may cost you time. Brandon Hansen uses a year's worth of data collected on his urban drive to and from work along with statistical analysis to show the effects of varying departure times and considering external factors like nearby school districts' schedules. In the end, a minor shift in his departure time results in saving driving hours equivalent to over a third of the vacation time given annually by his employer."
It'll cost you time if you live in the same city as TFA's author...
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This is such a half baked study and conclusion that I wonder why the hell it's on
is completely misleading. Good job with marketing this article to me, Slashdot!
The submitter simply wrote something that, to me, made no sense the first time I read it. Then I read a bit of the article and it made sense. The article is about how it may actually take you longer to commute home if you leave early from work. Took me a second but I was wondering if the article was talking about how it would cost you or your employer extra man hours or something or reduced your efficiency at work? I thought this because #1 slashdot loves to post "lost productivity" articles and #2 slashdot would be as dumb to post an article about common sense would they?
This is worthy of a first year college student science project at best, or maybe a civil engineer project to improve traffic, but it's not news. Everyone who has at least a small smattering of logical power knows that it's if everyone else is on the road when you drive, not how soon. I take back roads to work. Why? Because everyone else is on the main road, duh! I work 9:00 to 6:00 as well, so the backroads almost never "overflow" during those times when there is a particularly nasty snag either.
I fail to see how these facts and figures teach us anything about the world we didn't already know. It doesn't belong on any news website. This must be the slowest news day ever
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
when smart people start mentioning about how to "save" time, I just can't stop myself from wondering... How do you "save" time when everyone has equal 24 hours a day to start with and ends up with 0 hours at the end no matter what we do?
Can you really save "time"? or is it just another way of saying "even more things to do or not to do in given time"?
So what if there is traffic? Sometimes delay caused by traffic is just another way the universe is trying to say, "slow down" to deal with overflux of commuters on the road which is natural occurance due to lack of mass transporation or lack of use of it.
A wise physics professor once told me, travelling from point A to B is not just a matter of when, but how and why.
If it makes any sense, next time when you are stuck in the traffic in the morning, turn on your radio to your favorite tune and start singing your lungs out. Or just take another longer route to work to avoid getting stuck in the traffic. That might make spending time little "easier", because better of us know deep inside that Time can never be saved. After all, if you can't enjoy spending time, you might end up stressing yourself trying to "save" time.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
A "sad" tag would be more appropriate here - For any European it is just terrible to see how little vacation the average U.S. American has. But I guess that's the trade-off for being incredibly demanding customers/users. (come on, you really need someone bagging your groceries when you decide to shop for milk at 3am?)
RTFA. He did all the calculations while sitting in traffic.
-Peter
PS: I made that up.