It’s not how far you commute, but how long it takes

To best understand the nature of commuting, it’s best to first introduce:

Larry Tesler’s Law of Conservation of Complexity: The complexity of a business process is like energy – it cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be moved around. There is a base level of complexity that can’t be simplified any further. This is related to the adage, “The more things change the more they stay the same” and is the basis for…

Tog’s Law of Commuting: “The time of a commute is fixed. Only the distance is variable. People will strive to experience an equal or increasing level of complexity in their lives no matter what is done to reduce it. Make the roads faster, and people will move further away.”

The bottom line is that people won’t give up more than an hour or two of their daily lives to get to work, but will handle increasing levels of complexity to do so, which is what this CoolTown series on workplace alternatives is all about.

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