[juvoni]

I've done some personal "A/B" testing on audio vs print for retention and found that I remember significantly less when listening to non-fiction content as opposed to reading it and the recall dropoff is very sharp.

I mainly use audiobooks now for mostly fiction and narrative strong content like history, biographies/memories, or communication around domains like sales, public speaking, marketing, and relationship books.

I found a lot more interesting things about being more strategical in using the right medium(print vs ebook vs audio) depending on the nature of the content I'm consuming as well as my energy levels[1].

[1] https://juvoni.com/print-ebook-audiobook

[chc]

Did you actually listen under the same circumstances you would have read? For example, you wouldn't visually read a book while folding clothes. I suspect some of the lower recall with audiobooks is because people listen to them in situations where they wouldn't be able to read a physical book at all.

[juvoni]

I do admit that around half of the circumstances where I was listening to audiobooks I was multitasking or in a situation or environment where a physical book would be more difficult, but some situations were focused listening as well and strong narrative content usually persisted better in memory.

Most frequent contexts were: - Cooking - Working out - Airplane - Subway Rides (If the train is too crowded to read I'll switch to listening to an audiobook) - Walking Places - Focused listening before bed