During my Amazon Robotics Co-op, Amazon provided employees with a shuttle to get to the office. I started in January 2025 so the 5 day return to office mandate had just started. This now meant that I would be spending an hour and a half on the shuttle each day.
The first day I spent my time looking out the window and checking out the city I had arrived in only 48 hours ago. However, after the second day, I realized I would quickly run out of podcasts to listen to so I knew I had to do something else.
I eventually landed on writing and blog posts for a reasons:
- Offline
- I depleted my fast hotspot WiFi from my first few days in Boston so I needed an activity I could do without internet.
- Flow state
- Two 45 minute blocks of writing a day is enough time to jot down major ideas, write a few paragraphs, or edit previously written work and make decent progress.
- Platform
- The bus is bumpy so any sort of writing with a pen or drawing was ruled out. Typing and minimal mouse movement was ideal given these conditions.
- Active vs Passive
- Other activities such as listening to music, podcasts, watching shows, and reading were other options but, those are all passive activities. Done too often, those activities can make me more tired. Plus, if I want to listen to music or a podcast, I can play it in the background and then turn it off whenever I need deep focus on my writing.
I will admit that I'm not always 100% focused on writing on the bus. There are other co-ops on the shuttle so I'm often engaged in conversations for a portion of the trip. However, I plan to take advantage of the time I have each day. When I run out of blog ideas or when my co-op ends, I'll try to find something else active to do, or defer to reading.