How To: Listen LESS and Learn MORE

In this day and time of ever-increasing amounts of information, it can be hard to keep up. If you’re like me, you may have started supplementing your reading with audio books or podcasts. However, with the large amount of audio available, how do you ever listen to it all AND retain any of it?

Well, my solution to one accidentally presented a solution to the other. It all began when I bought my mp3 player last December. I started downloading different podcasts to listen to on my way to and from work and on my lunch break. Soon, I found several that I really liked and was going back and getting new ones from the same source each week. It wasn’t long before I found that I had more audio to listen to than I had time to listen. So, while I was playing around some of the menus one day, I found the setting that allows for me to speed up or slow down the audio that I am playing. The scale on my player goes from -8 to +8. Using the +8 setting increases the speed of the audio approximately 20% over the original recording speed. Doing this allowed me to speed up my audio (without any noticable change in pitch or quality) and allow me to listen to more in less time.

At the same time, I found that I was having to pay closer attention to what I was listening to, simply because everyone was talking faster than I was used to. So, as I began to get used to the speed of the audio, I found that I was actually able to remember more about what I had just heard than I was when I was listening to the audio at normal speed. Now, I don’t know why this is, I just know that it works for me. I’m sure there is some theory or psychological explanation for it, but, frankly, I don’t care why it works, just that it does.

So, if you want to pack more listening and learning into your day and not sacrifice time, try speeding up you audio.

WARNING: I have found that once I’ve gotten used to the higher speed audio, I want to speed it up even more, which I can do on my mp3 player. Also, if you get used to the faster speed of the audio, listening to the same program at normal speed can be dangerous to your sanity. It just seems like everyone is talking sooooo sloooooowww.