Why I Turned My Commute Into a Daily Speaking Practice

My job runs on talking. Client calls, team meetings, video scripts, the pitch I give a prospect who has never heard of SearchLight Digital. For a while, my off-the-cuff answer to most of that was worse than my written one — I'd get the thought right in my head and lose half of it on the way out of my mouth.

Reading about communication was not going to fix that. The only thing that fixes talking badly is talking, a lot, with the camera rolling so I can't pretend it went better than it did. So on August 27, I set my phone on the dash, picked a topic, and pressed record on the drive to work. That's Commute 2 Work — no studio, no script, no editing out the bad parts.

The rule is simple and it's the whole point: whatever comes out in that drive is what gets posted. No retakes, no cutting the sentence where I trail off, no polishing the argument after the fact. Starting something new is the first one — ten minutes, one topic, every flaw left in.

That constraint is uncomfortable on purpose. The moment I know I can fix it later, I stop working to get it right the first time. Removing the safety net is what makes the rep count.

Day one I argued through whether college is still worth it in the AI era. Is college worth it in the AI era?? is not really about college when you watch it back — it's about picking a position cold and defending it out loud for ten straight minutes without notes.

That's the actual skill being built. Not opinions about college. The ability to take a stance, structure it as I go, and land it before I run out of road.

Less throat-clearing. I used to spend the first thirty seconds of any answer warming up to the point. Now I lead with it, because I've had to lead with it two dozen mornings in a row with the clock running.

Fewer dead ends. The habit of talking myself into a sentence I can't finish has mostly gone away, because on camera there's nowhere to hide when it happens. And it carries over — the same muscle that gets me through ten unscripted minutes on a commute is the one that gets me through a client asking a question I didn't prep for.

None of these are polished. That's on purpose. If you're waiting to sound good before you talk more, you have it backwards — the reps are what make you sound good, not the other way around.

The channel's on YouTube if you want to see the format: Commute 2 Work.