The Commute

Read all of my Seattle Times columns.

I used to commute to Redmond to a job I loved. But I can still feel the trapped frustration of sitting on the 520 bridge in the dark winter afternoon, rain streaking down the windshield, red brake lights as far as I could see. Just sitting, waiting, my youth ticking by.

“What would the commute be like?” is one of my go-to questions when I help coaching clients evaluate job offers.

The commute is easy to gloss over in the glow of an offer. Coaching clients will tell me it’s a dream job, full of opportunity and promise, and that the one-hour commute (each way!) will be fine. They’ll listen to self-help audio books, they say. They’ll have time to write that novel, and it’ll be good to have the time to decompress.

I don’t let my clients tell themselves that story.

“How long is that commute?” I badger…

(Read the rest of the story at The Seattle Times.)