With corporates moving back to a full work-from-office mandate, my days have stretched longer—about three extra hours lost on the road.

Traffic, I’m realizing, has a silent cost.

The day now starts early. By the time I step out, it’s around 7 a.m. And by the time I return home, it’s often past 5 p.m. There’s still work to wrap up—messages, reviews, loose ends—which quietly takes another couple of hours.

Somewhere in between, I keep asking myself: where is the time to do the things I want to do?

I’m not even talking about rest or leisure in a grand sense. Just time to think. To write. To move at my own pace for a bit.

During the commute, I try to make the most of it—calling people, catching up, staying connected. And yet, there’s a strange guilt that follows. A feeling that I’m busy, but not doing what I mentally classify as “real work.”

There are always a hundred things pending. And the longer the day stretches, the harder it becomes to tell whether the problem is time management—or simply too much time being consumed elsewhere.

Is the daily travel to office a boon or a bane?

I don’t have an answer yet. Only a growing awareness that some costs don’t show up on calendars or time sheets—but we feel them, quietly, every single day.

Somewhere between traffic signals and to-do lists, something essential feels misplaced—perhaps this isn’t about work at all, but about time slipping away unnoticed.