Enjoy your commute
Travelling to and from work needn’t be miserable – use that time to change your life for the better
For a huge number of people, the worst part about work is getting there. Studies have found that the average UK professional will spend around 400 days of their life commuting, and most of that time is wasted grumbling about late trains, staring through the windscreen at non-moving traffic, or, if you’re feeling really inventive, calculating how many minutes it’ll be before you’re back in bed again.
Rather than dismissing commuting as a worthless hour or two, how about taking it as the perfect opportunity to do something useful; something creative; something life-changing? There’s loads of great tech out there that’s specially designed to help travellers while away journeys constructively.
Always dreamed of escaping your dead-end job by publishing a bestselling book? Set the ball rolling on your commute with the Royole RoWrite Smart Writing Pad (£119, royole.com). Some of the best pieces of art started life as notes scribbled on a piece of paper (John Lennon is said to have jotted down the lyrics to A Hard Day’s Night on the back of his son Julian’s birthday card), and the RoWrite brings that concept into the digital age. Bound in a luxury texturedcloth folio, it contains a physical paper pad on which you can capture ideas using a pressure-sensing ballpoint pen. As if by magic, your doodles are automatically digitised and stored on the device – and if you hook up to the accompanying app, you can view the digital document, edit it in real time and share it with friends.
Another gadget that’s guaranteed to get your artistic juices flowing on the train or bus is the iPad Pro (from £619, apple.com). With a glorious edge-toedge Liquid Retina display, and a new, touch-responsive Apple Pencil – you can now change brushes with a simple double-tap – this digital palette will give you the freedom to draw, sketch or watercolour. There are numerous free apps to help you channel your inner Van Gogh – Adobe Illustrator Draw and Autodesk SketchBook (both free from the App Store) are a good place to start.
With an easy-to-hold ergonomic shape and convenient page-turning buttons (you can also swipe), the Kobo Forma ereader (£239, uk.kobobooks.com) is just right for bookworms in transit. Via the OverDrive
There are numerous apps designed to help you speak French, German, or even Klingon, while you move from A to B
platform, you can connect to your library from wherever you are and borrow ebooks.
Learning a new language has come a long way from the days of sitting in a classroom and asking the way to La Rochelle in a loud voice. Nowadays, there are numerous apps designed to help you speak French, German, or even Klingon, while you move from A to B. The brilliantly named Memrise (from free, Android/iOS) uses memes to help you remember words and phrases. Mindsnacks (from free, iOS) enables you to master foreign lingo in minutes via fun, bitesize games. Or, if you have an Oculus Go or Gear VR, Mondly (£3.99) will transport you to various virtual reality locations (a Spanish restaurant, a train to Berlin), so you can practice your vocab.
Your commute is also a great opportunity to revitalise your health. The Headspace app (from free, Android/iOS) offers hundreds of short, guided meditations to help improve sleep, manage stress, resolve anger issues and even revive relationships.
Of course, if your journey to work isn’t too far, you could even ditch big transport and use some pedal power. With six gears, Brompton’s new M6L electric folding bike (£2,845, brompton.com) will enable you to tone those leg muscles over flat or hilly terrain; or, if you’re worried about getting too sweaty for the office, activate the battery and enjoy an effortless ride.