It’s Monday morning, and you couldn’t be more excited. You woke up at five without an alarm, exercised at the gym, did a quick sesh with your meditation guru and then settled down to a healthy breakfast with your family, where you dispensed parental wisdom to your earnest children à la Danny Tanner on Full House. Now the only thing that stands between you and your office is your daily commute, which you plan to spend listening to classical music in a zen state and pull up to the office refreshed and ready to work.

Psych! Not! Opposite day! Let’s be real: Commuting sucks, and most of us do it sleep-deprived while slamming a Go-Gurt in gridlocked traffic. But there’s gotta be a middle ground. Below, a few tips to make your commute suck a little less.

6. Ride the Train

Studies show that long commutes have a negative effect on your mental and physical health. But one team of scientists poured a bunch of bubbly stuff from one beaker to another (that’s how it works, right?) and found an exception: People who ride the train are less stressed and more smiled upon by the mood gods. So what are you waiting for? Dig that conductor hat out of storage and make like the Quad City DJs, ’90s hip-hop’s most vocal advocates of public transit. Use your average 25-minute commute to catch up on work from the office, read a book, or make faces at the chumps stuck in freeway traffic.

5. Join the 3%

Sometimes it’s good to be in the minority, especially when it gives you rock-hard calves. So come on, Norm. Jump off the bandwagon and join the small but growing cool kids club of bike commuters. The benefits are off the chain. People who bike to work take fewer sick days, merge work and workout, and usually end up in the Olympics. Plus, who’s ever heard of a bike traffic jam?

4. Make Friends with Benefits

This just in: Driving a car to work and back every day is isolating. It starts out innocently enough — just some morning talk radio and a cup of coffee. But by month five, you’re screaming your parenting opinions to Dr. Laura’s disembodied voice while gulping Starbucks from a Camelbak. Time to get a friend. A buddy. A pal. A piñata with a human head. Someone you can talk to, vent with, or who will at least give you candy if you hit them with a broom. Sharing a car with a friend is win-win-win. You’ll be happier, you’ll conserve resources, and you’ll build a trusting relationship with someone who also knows all the words to “Manic Monday” and really, really wishes it was Sunday.

3. Turn Off Tech

Remember what we said about getting work done on the train before work? WE NEVER SAID THAT; YOU’RE CRAZY. Obviously starting out a long workday by toggling between Instagram, work memos, and videos of puppies making friends with dolphins is going to short out your brain and turn you into a shell of a human being. So you’ll just have to finish that Game of Thrones episode profit-and-loss statement later. You’ve got some good old-fashioned uninterrupted sitting and breathing to do!

2. An Ounce of Preparation…

...is worth the pound of McDonald’s hamburger that you will stress eat if you don’t prepare for your commute ahead of time. You know that if Poor Richard were still alive he’d be using his almanac and collaborating with some corporate productivity guru to urge you to commute smarter, not harder. Like, he’d totally tell you to get to sleep earlier at night so you can eat breakfast, kiss your rugrats and beat rush hour in the morning. Or he’d remind you to lay out your keys, clothing and briefcase in the evening, so you can wake up and get dressed with your eyes closed. He’d definitely tell you to check traffic on Google Maps or Waze (seriously, Poor Richard was way into Waze) instead of trusting your inner GPS, or double-checking you have everything you need before you leave the house. After all, there’s nothing Richard hates more than having to turn his buggy around halfway to the Constitutional Convention because he forgot his bifocals.

1. Listen Smarter, Sound Smarter

Staring at taillights while listening to Top 40 softens the brain. Wanna improve yourself during your commute? Finding some new quality podcasts will make you smarter, more interesting, maybe even better looking, so that when you’re standing at the water cooler with your crush from marketing you can tell her that male seahorses carry the babies and give birth to hundreds of live young at once. She’ll be so into you that she’ll ask for a ride home just so she can learn more about the gender-bending secrets of the animal kingdom. Surprise her (and yourself!) with a well-curated podcast collection that spans the political to the personal.

News junkie? Listen to The New York Times’ The Daily to get your 20 minutes of weekday world wisdom. Love investigative reporting? Check out the muck being raked over at Reveal. Fancy yourself a detective? Keep your true crime skills up to snuff by following the gruesome and grisly with the folks at Criminal. Get your unnarrated stories of the human condition from Love and Radio, or your narrated stories of the same from This American Life. Hold hands with your crush all the way through the commercials for Blue Apron and Squarespace.

Ready to upgrade your ride for all the new and improved commuting? Find a car you’ll love at KSL Cars.

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