As someone who grew up with an insatiable passion for cars, one of the main criteria when I imported my dream JDM car was to get it with a manual. This might come as a shock to some people, and it certainly was surprising to my friends, given I live right next to New York City. After all, few enjoy driving in the city to begin with, much less with a manual transmission — and certainly not when that city is Manhattan during rush hour.

I’ll go out on a limb and say that you probably won’t enjoy driving a manual in New York City (or most traffic-packed cities, for that matter). As an enthusiast of over three decades and an avid manual driver, my honest advice is to just get an automatic if you live in a busy city. But sometimes, you may have an itch that an automatic can’t scratch. So, despite what everyone else thought, I got a manual and still somehow enjoy driving in the city. Yes, I’m a lunatic, but I’m also a realist — there are methods to my madness.

In this article, I’ll draw on personal experience, as well as using anecdotes of other enthusiasts and driving instructors alike, to make your daily commute in a manual vehicle as painless as possible. That said, all of these tips assume that you are proficient with a manual in the first place; this is not meant for beginners, but is for experienced drivers who are either moving to the city or want some advanced tips. Let’s get into it.

This one might seem obvious — you know how to shift gears, use a clutch, and so on. What’s the point of learning more to drive in the city? I’m a visual learner and someone with a vivid imagination. Even so, it took a while for everything to “click” in my head when I first learned to drive a stick. It was difficult to parse exactly what was happening with the clutch pedal, what made a shift smooth, and why cars lurch. What really did it for me was learning how all these parts interact and how I was a part of that system.

To put it another way, understanding what everything was doing helped me visualize what exactly the car was doing when I shifted. This helps a lot in city driving because you learn crucial feedback the car is providing and what to do with it. Driving a manual is a miserable experience if you don’t know how to stop your car from randomly lurching in between gear changes or when setting off from traffic lights — all common occurrences in the city. If you understand what the car is trying to tell you, you can react accordingly, not to mention prolong the life of your transmission. Reducing panic and stress is the foundation for success here.

For the sake of brevity, I won’t go into detail about how each part works. However, numerous YouTube tutorials are available to help. One great example is a video from a British driving instructor called Conquer Driving, which you can watch here.

Another tip I’ve learned over the years is that clutches will behave and feel differently between cars. First-time buyers should beware of sports cars with really tight, snappy clutches or classic cars with mechanical clutches and heavy return springs. Yes, you absolutely can use a manual classic as a daily driver, which I myself have done for many years. But if you get, let’s say, a muscle car with a Muncie M-22 “Rock Crusher,” you’ll find your left leg doing far more work than your right one.

Likewise, cars have different shifter throws — the distance between gears — and shifter knobs. You can change the latter for a heavier or lighter one to suit your preference, of course. But there’ll always be a marked difference between shifting, for instance, a three-speed column shifter (also known as a “three on the tree”) versus a tight, refined shifter in something like a classic Civic or S2000. You’ll likely want something in the middle: a car that’s easily shifted and has forgiving gear ratios, so you don’t stall out in traffic.

Overall, my recommendation is to get a basic economy car or a used luxury car — something designed for city driving. Moreover, you can change out the shift knob for something that feels better to hold, maybe even splurge for a short-throw shift kit if that’s your thing. Regardless, always test-drive and row through the gears, bearing in mind that you’ll do that dozens or hundreds of times in a single trip.

Even if you’ve been driving stick for decades, you’re liable to stall or mis-shift now and then under pressure — and there’s a lot of pressure in cities. It’s embarrassing, but it happens to all of us. What do you do? Unlike automatics, manuals demand more steps, not all of which we practice daily. Let’s say you stall out at a traffic light and people start honking behind you, or you’re pulling into a spot, and your car unexpectedly lurches because your left foot twitched a bit while you were looking back.

Many scenarios can trigger a sudden bout of panic; driving in the city is, after all, scary. So what I do is go for a drive every weekend and practice different panic techniques. Sometimes, with the engine off, I’ll pretend that I’m in a panic-brake situation and practice the steps to keep my car from stalling, for instance.

Other fundamentals, such as gear ratios, are worth keeping in mind as well. Obviously, the higher gear you’re in, the lower your engine will rev. But the shift from first to second is quite different than second to third, so it’s sometimes worth it to practice upshifts and downshifts before committing to driving in the city to refresh your brain. You’ll be doing those shifts a lot, and under pressure, too. The less you have to think about shifting, the more attention you can afford to pay to your surroundings, which is crucial in areas with heavy traffic.

This one may seem sacrilegious to my fellow New Jerseyans and New Yorkers — tailgating on the Parkway is our God-given right. But those rules change in heavy traffic, doubly so when driving a manual car. Driving at a steady speed means the person behind you doesn’t have to brake as much. The person behind them isn’t on their brakes, either, and so on. Entire traffic jams can start because of some errant driver hitting the brakes and causing a cascading slowdown.

Sure, a driver may pull in the space in front of you, but anticipating traffic flow means far less stress on the working parts of your transmission, body, and (in my experience) mental health. I know it sounds like you won’t get anywhere, believe me. But think about it — how much anxiety is caused by just watching the leading driver’s brake lights like a hawk? Moreover, how much would you be riding the clutch and shifting gears because you suddenly have to hit your own brakes to avoid rear-ending them? It’s bad for traffic, bad for your car, and bad for your concentration.

Learning how to read traffic flow is a crucial skill for manual drivers for this very reason. You want to be in gear (and in control) of your car as much as possible. Having to shift constantly means you’ll be wearing internal components and tiring yourself out; instead, I leave my car in second and let the torque pull me along, modulating my speed with a hint of brake and throttle now and then.

This one might also seem obvious to those who do it regularly, but let’s face it: Not everyone can heel-toe downshift, perform a flawless hill-start, or have the coordination to downshift to second while executing a turn. Granted, there are generally multiple ways to do this. For instance, it’s perfectly valid to shift to neutral while coming to a complete stop for a traffic light; that’s just manual driving 101. But what about more advanced techniques? Those can save you both time and maintenance headaches if you practice them adequately.

Take heel-toe rev matching, for example. Let’s say you want to make a right-hand turn, so you brake and execute the downshift before the corner. When you downshift on a car without auto-rev match, you need to manually press the throttle to bring the RPMs up to speed to prevent the car from jerking. Doing that while holding your foot on the brake means you have to press three pedals at once, which can be done by heel-toe shifting — using your toe for the brake and heel for the gas, or rolling your foot from the brake to gas, whichever way feels more comfortable for you. This lets you shift smoothly and prevents clutch wear.

Different cities will demand different skills. If you move to San Francisco, for example, it’s probably a good idea to practice hill starts. New York City has lots of traffic lights and speed changes, so heel-toe shifting and shifting while turning at right angles are beneficial here. You’ll be a more confident driver and save money on transmission service costs, a nice bonus in today’s economy.