When people are asked to rate how they feel during different daily activities, commuting consistently appears near the bottom. The reasons are structural rather than a matter of individual preference.
It sits at the intersection of high demand and no control
A commuter cannot influence traffic, service disruption, or how crowded a carriage is, yet is fully responsible for arriving on time.
That combination, obligation without influence, is the arrangement most reliably associated with strain in the working conditions literature.
It also explains why the same journey is experienced differently when the arrival time does not matter, since removing the obligation removes most of the pressure.
Variability costs more than duration
A journey that reliably takes fifty minutes can be planned around and mentally closed off in advance.
A journey that takes anywhere between thirty and seventy minutes requires monitoring throughout, and the monitoring is itself the demanding part.
This is why people report unpredictable short commutes as worse than longer predictable ones, which is invisible to any measure based on average travel time.
Enforced proximity has its own effects
Crowded public transport requires being close to strangers without the social scripts that normally govern such closeness, and without the option to withdraw.
Personal space norms are strong and violating them produces a measurable response, which crowding does continuously for the length of the journey.
Passengers manage this with avoidance behaviours such as headphones, reading and fixed gaze, and the effort of maintaining those is part of what makes crowded travel tiring.
It occupies the boundary between two roles
The commute is the interval where a person shifts between home and work identities, and it has to accommodate the transition in both directions.
Some people use it deliberately for that purpose and report the journey as valuable, particularly when it is walked or cycled.
Others arrive at each end still carrying the previous role, in which case the journey has cost time without providing the transition it might have.
Mode changes the picture substantially
Journeys that involve physical activity are reported very differently from passive ones of the same duration, and the difference persists across studies of wellbeing at work.
Part of that is exercise, and part is that walking and cycling offer far more control over pace and route than driving in traffic or waiting for a train.
Where a commute cannot be changed, the parts most worth adjusting are the ones affecting predictability and control, since those are what generate most of the effect.