The Two Minute Detour

Today I made a familiar choice: to drive up Federal Ave and take a left on 38th St on my way to the local dry cleaner to drop off a pair of trousers for hemming.

Down this route lie most of my common errands and chores. It’s also the way I go to visit friends and family who live out that direction. All to say, it’s a well-trodden path for me—and a not-unusual pattern I follow when leaving the house.

It’s also almost always a mess.

Federal is a big north–south thoroughfare with stoplights every half mile and seemingly endless traffic and construction. To get onto 38th, you have to take a left on what feels like the world’s shortest green arrow—and today, when I made that turn, it was directly into construction.

Now, this little stretch of road likely isn’t any worse than your own local route. I’m sure you have your own Federal Ave wherever you live.

I also have to admit that my tolerance for traffic is on the low end, and my desire for more non-car-based public transportation infrastructure in U.S. cities is on the high end.

But I also live under the same tyranny as you—the Google Maps-ification of routes and thinking about getting from here to there. I take this unpleasant path because it’s the “quickest way,” without considering any other key metric like whether it’s pleasant or not.

However, today was different. The traffic was particularly frustrating, and paired with the fact that I didn’t have that busy of a morning, I had a novel thought: Is there a nicer way to get home?

It turns out there was—and it was delightful.

It took a few minutes longer, but I wasn’t focused on time. The goal had changed. The new goal was to avoid aggravation (sitting in traffic, dealing with construction, driving on an ugly Stroad) and to simply explore—to get home by the most pleasant route possible.

And what happened? I enjoyed the drive. I wandered down a few lovely, new-to-me streets lined with old, well-kept homes and tall ash trees just beginning to turn from summer green to autumn yellow. I rolled down the window to let in the brisk fall air and caught that unmistakable scent of wet dirt and the mineral coolness that follows a light rain. All of this—just a few miles from home, on roads I’d never explored—led me to a new back way to the dry cleaner, one that conveniently connects to several of my usual stops without ever touching Federal or the much-feared 38th St.

I noticed my body was less in a state of alert and agitation. I was more relaxed and curious because I wasn’t worried about whether I’d made it home the fastest possible way.

That was no longer the point—or the goal.

And what did it cost me?

Well, my usual route is ten minutes; this one took twelve. So it cost me about two extra minutes of my day.

And of course, this can’t always be your choice. An unknown increase in travel time over a five-hour drive might not be feasible, and sometimes you really are running late. But today, I had those two minutes to spare—and the trade was well worth it.

So, will this help us find world peace or transform you into the best possible version of yourself? I don’t know. Try it and report back. Or just try it and enjoy the simple act of realizing that sometimes the obvious goal of a task isn’t the right one to measure it by.

Enjoy getting lost a bit—and let me know how it made you feel.