Riding Lagos Traffic Differently
Although I have lived most of my life in Lagos, I never looked forward to moving back after school. I love the city, no doubt. Lots of beautiful places to hang out. Lots of business opportunities. Almost everything good about Nigeria can be found in Lagos. But my dread for this heaven (or hell, depending on your perspective) was for a single, ugly reason: traffic.
Some weeks ago, I made the move. Egbeda became home again after about six years. For the better part of these weeks, I hardly had cause to step out of my estate. If there was a valid reason to go more than three kilometres away, my brain always miraculously cooked up a strong excuse not to move an inch (P.S. I am not that lazy…I just love my sanity). When I could not help but go handle some business or the other, I timed my journey to fall within non-rush hour times.
Let me put my phobia for Lagos traffic into more context. I was offered a couple of jobs within my first three weeks of being home. I turned them all down. It wasn’t that the offers were not good enough. I refused to lie to myself. There are few things I dread as much as wasting hours sitting in one position doing nothing. What worse way can one be useless? So I chose to stay home, go heavy on some self-development, and run my “street hustle”. Did I also mention I worked an interesting and challenging job from home too? God bless remote work. Life could not have been better!
And then, I got a job with a firm too amazing to turn down!
I started on the job on Monday. It’s just a week into the job and I feel like I have been run over by a train. If you know Lagos well enough, you can imagine trying to get to Victoria Island from Egbeda before 8 AM. I leave home by 4:45 AM and get to work some three hours later. Coming back, I also spend about three hours on the road (on a good day). That’s roughly six hours of my precious daily life burnt up in traffic.
If you are interested, you could run the numbers and see how many months in a year I would waste in transit. If you wish, convert the time to money and go ahead and scream at how much I would be robbed off. I have not done the math. I fear that if I do, I may weep myself out.
But I am not one to sit by and be a victim of manslaughter.
I have thought up ways to avoid death by traffic frustration. The most important step is to get a place closer to work. Until then, I would make lemonades with the lemon I’ve been dished. I have decided to employ some hacks to make the best out of my traffic time I will share here.
READ
Many of us set reading goals but always fail to meet up. While sitting in traffic, it would be a very great step to read a few pages of that book you have always wanted to read. If you have blogs (or other regular publications) you are interested in, use this time to catch up on them.
THINK
There is a lot of good that comes out of thinking. I know this because I think a lot. Ironically, as noisy as the road can be, sitting in traffic could be the only alone-time you get throughout the day. It’s about time you think about everything. The project at work, the presentation coming up, the business idea you believe is the next big thing, your personal life. There is never a shortage of what to think about. You could also use this time to run some checks on how well you are doing with regards to those goals you set.
CATCH UP
There is so much value in well-serviced human relationships. That job may have taken a bulk of your day, keeping you away from checking up regularly on your family and friends. However, work-life balance is as important as that paycheck at the end of the month. Make phone calls, chat people up, go through your social media feeds, drop comments on posts, connect.
It has been barely a week I started on these. But I think I am better than I was last week (I mean, I have started writing…again). I am riding this Lagos boat differently and you should too!
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