uGO | Think About It Thursdays

Posted on 08/23/18 in uGO

How you get to work is a habit: similar to whether or not you eat breakfast, how many hours per night you sleep, or how often you exercise - any time we make a change in our habits, we see ripple effects in other aspects of our lives. Charles Duhig’s The Power of Habit explains how impactful habits are (for better or for worse) and unpacks habit-formation.

Most of us have a regimented morning routine we follow - except maybe when we start a new job, or when New Year’s rolls around and we revise our resolutions, but most of us wake up every day, follow the same morning routine, and get to our workplace. In an average day, we spend a lot of time problem solving at work, which can be very mentally draining, which is why there are certain parts of the day that need to be routine. That’s Duhig’s point in The Power of Habit - it’s important we recognize what those routine, “auto-pilot” settings are. We'll get to why that's so important a little later in the blog.

Here’s some of what we know about how people get to work in University Circle.
We know that most people, 84-86% based on our surveys, are driving their car by themselves. A small percentage carpools, another small percentage takes transit, and an even smaller percentage bikes or walks. We also know that University Circle draws employees from a wide area - East, West, even South! Our survey results revealed 182 unique home zip codes among employee respondents.

When we ask people how satisfied they are with their commute, the people who live farther from work are much less satisfied - the length of time spent commuting directly correlates with overall commute satisfaction. This confirms academic research done on commute length and employee productivity: workers with longer commutes are 46% more likely to get less than the recommended 7 hours of sleep per night, 33% more likely to suffer from depression, 21% more likely to be obese and 12% more likely to report work-related stress.

Back to the habits! What if changing your commute increased your health—physical and financial—without requiring more hours in your day?
Switching from driving to biking to work immediately saves money on gas, parking fees and vehicle maintenance.

Did you know: Many auto insurance companies lower insurance premiums for cars that aren’t used for commuting. On the health side, people who start bike commuting on average lose 13lbs in their first year. The benefits ripple from there. What if biking to work also meant you could drop your gym membership? What if it meant your household could go from two cars to one?

For all of these reasons, thinking about our commute as a choice and a habit is important. Making the switch is not easy because it requires reconfiguring our “auto-pilot” settings. Doing things like taking a safe urban cycling class, biking the route to work on a Saturday afternoon or with someone else who regularly bikes are ways to test the water, and see what works for you. What we do know is that making the change has a ripple effect power to improve our productivity, workplace satisfaction and wellbeing. That’s worth thinking about!

Interested in switching up your commute? Head to www.ugointhecircle.com for all Circle-friendly transportation methods, and plan out your new routine!