Some people are lucky enough to live a couple of minute’s walk from their place of work. But for most people, that’s just not an option. Instead, they have to commute – a word that strikes fear and misery into the hearts of anybody who has spend hours trying to get to work in the snow or in a crowded subway carriage.
But in amongst all the misery, there’s some good news: your smartphone is the perfect companion for those long, daily trips to and from the office. Here are some of the ways in which it can help.
#1: Log Your Mileage
Logging your mileage is one of the most annoying things that business people have to do. Well – it was until GPS-enabled smartphones came along. Triplog has developed an app that automatically starts tracking your phone when you move faster than five miles per hour. That means that you can track all your journeys you make for work without having to keep an enormous paper trail to show the tax man.
#2: Help You Navigate The Big City
If you walk to work, you might be interested in Citymapper. It’s been the Apple app of the year for a couple of years running now, and for a good reason. Unlike most travel companion apps, it stitches together multiple forms of transport, helping you reach your destination without annoying hiccups. This app is perfect for people who take multiple forms of transports in the morning, like taking the bus to the train station, or for people who regularly find themselves in new cities. If you’re a fitness buff, you can also use the feature on the app that tracks how many calories you’ve burned.
#3: Keep You Entertained
Those long trips on the train can be very boring. Not to worry, here are now dozens of rich and detailed video games like Clash of Clans, now supported by modern smartphones. If you are a child of the 1990s, you’ll love this. There are now dozens of games, like Command and Conquer, Dune, Total Annihilation and Warcraft that can be played on mobile, thanks to updated software and gaming engines. Remember how many hours of fun you had on them when you were a kid? Relive it all on your daily commute, and take your mind off adult life for a while.
#4: Help Out With To-Do Lists
Another thing you can do on your ride home is think about how you’re going to organize the next day/week/month. You could do it all on paper, but it gets messy, it’s hard to write while you’re moving and you can’t quickly make changes at a later date. A better idea is to use an app like Things. This is “a high-powered to-do list app,” according to Time magazine, giving users the ability to synchronize tasks with other people and their home computer, as well as categorize items by project. This is ideal for individuals who have multiple work and family timetables to manage and who struggle to stay on top of everything.