[tristanho]

Audiobooks certainly feel like they have much worse retention. To solve this, whenever I listen to an audiobook now, I'll both buy it on Audible and on Kindle. Then, whenever I hear something particularly compelling/important, I quickly hop into the Kindle app on my phone and highlight it. If a book has whispersync[0] enabled this is especially easy.

This, combined with having a workflow for consistently reviewing my highlights[1] has improved my (admittedly self-reported) retention significantly. There's plenty of science that supports how effective spaced repetition is for retention.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000827...

[1] https://readwise.io -- disclaimer: I built this, but I genuinely think it's helpful here.

[winkywooster]

This is what I do. I also will read the Kindle portion of book when I can, only listening to audio when I'm in the car or doing something with my hands. I'm also a heavy user of "skip back 30 secs" (the back button on my truck's steering column does this out of the box). If I find my thoughts wandering, I will skip back to a portion I remember, and listen again. If I find myself skipping back a lot, I'll listen to something else.

In my personal experience, audio has a lower retention rate compared to reading. However, you can train yourself to do better. The benefit is I can listen at 2x, and get a lot books in during my commute.