As long as you're paying more attention to the road than to your audiobook...
That's the main reason I never got into audiobooks and podcasts. They engage my brain just enough to prevent multitasking, but not enough to stop a part of me from getting bored and restless.
Similar to most work meetings when I'm not presenting or otherwise directly involved in specific topics under discussion. It's a pain.
> As long as you're paying more attention to the road than to your audiobook...
I am, that's why I hit "Rewind" on my audiobooks very often. But even though I'm "distracted" by the road, I find that I concentrate more on a (difficult) audiobook than the equivalent book. With a book, it's actually easy to zone out for a paragraph or two. With audiobooks, if I zone out, I feel quite lost very quickly. I need to rewind.
Interesting! I guess it depends on the kind of driving. Once you hit the Autobahn it's pretty easy on the brain. Riding a motorcycle in a big city is a different experience.
I love working from cafés. That mention in your manuscript is a lovely touch.
Me too. The different atmosphere acts like a catalyst if I like the place and work comfortable.
> That mention in your manuscript is a lovely touch.
Thanks.
I drive a car, but city traffic is much more demanding than the Autobahn. Even then, I lately prefer to listen to the machine, and let my brain to do its background processing.
I somehow learnt to sit comfortable by myself and let what lies beneath to surface. It serves me much better than constantly consuming something.
Personally, even if I lose something listening to an audiobook while driving, I gain more than if I did something else. It's otherwise lost time. I can always re-listen and gain something I missed the first time.
That's one perspective. On the other hand, I find many missing pieces what I'm looking for while driving in silence. When I reach my destination, either have answers or new questions to jot down.
I think silence / noise is another form of breathing. After filling your brains' queues, you need to allow it to process these queues in its own terms. When queues are processed, there is loot to collect at the other end of the bar.
I tend to rewind audio books and re listen to the last minute or two or three.
Ten years ago I read James Joyce’s Ulysses as a book. I enjoyed it, but when I listened to it as an audio book a year later, the excellent actors/voice artists really brought it to life for me.
I often self describe myself as a ‘gentleman scientist’ because for many years I have done my own research, sometimes in areas where I had no interest in practical application. I also believe that the act of writing is crucial to thinking (I have written 20+ books, 2500+ blog articles). I think too many people put too much emphasis on “work” vs. just living: averaging only ‘working’ about 60% of my adult life has made room for other activitites.
I cannot say what works for other people. For me, unless I’m reading with my eyeballs, taking notes, and working examples, I’m not really convinced I’m learning anything difficult.
disagree. You just have to actively listen, and cannot let your mind wander. you can also read and have no idea what you just read if you let your mind wander. Currently learning spanish via a podcast and its very effective, I just have to pause and rewind constantly to make sure I fully understand whats going on
I was pretty clear that I was just describing what works for me, right? So, as the authority on the topic, I declare you incorrect.
It is fine if you think I’m not representative or usual, but I’m telling you, I’ve tried listening very hard in many different contexts, it just doesn’t work.
I don’t think language-learning is a good example, because of course hearing the language is a crucial part there. And on the other hand, good luck learning to read/write Chinese (or even Spanish) with just podcasts.
The snob's take is bad, but there is a point of agreement I have with one aspect of audiobooks: it's impossible to remember details about things that fall outside your native language, if you haven't already studied them. For example, I listened to a nonfiction audiobook about Xi Jinping. I could tell you the broad strokes of the people in his orbit from the late 1970s on, but I have no idea how to spell or even Google them effectively, because I never read them--I only heard them.
The same goes for foreign concepts/places/etc., for me at least there is no substitute for reading when it comes to retention and recall of material.
I saw elsewhere that someone said it was ablist to say that an audiobook doesn't count as a book, which I could only think that we put too much importance on books.
Don't take this as an anti-intellectual screed. Far from it--I read a lot. But I think you can also learn from magazines, newspapers, plays, orations, etc. It leads to this weird situation where people are optimizing not for what they're learning but for the count. How many books have you read this year? Does an audiobook count? Like... it doesn't really matter.
Yeah if someone force me with gun to say it, I'd say even reading braille doesn't count as reading either. But it doesn't matter anyway since it's just different modes of absorbing information.
Reading material (backlight vs. reflective screen) differs in my experience. Also typing and writing are very different neurologically, but people don't want to acknowledge that, AFAICS.
Speaking of neural pathways, my pet theory is that you're a lot more likely to be "engaged" by an "influencer" if you watch them talk than if you just read the same speech.
Mostly because a lot more of your brain is involved in just handling the input so a lot less is available to notice the bullshit.
I used to agree with you, but then I found out how most people get through audiobooks and TV shows. They just miss stuff! They zone out for a few seconds or a few minutes. They take phone calls and move the laundry into the dryer without pausing and rewinding. It's crazy! Watching a fast-moving TV show with someone like that is bizarre because they'll happily sit through a complex conversation between characters even though they missed all the context that makes the conversation make sense.
Granted you can miss a lot when you're reading, too, since a lot of the context for any work is external to the work itself, but with a book, you have to actively choose to keep going when you're confused, rather than passively letting it flow past you. Nothing privileges the choice to turn to the next page rather than returning to the previous page.
I think the experience of reading books at least is good training for how to read an audiobook or listen to a lecture. You should be quick to pause and rewind if you suspect you missed something.
To be pedantic, it’s definitionally not reading. You listened to the book, you didn’t read it.
There’s just an odd legitimacy associated specifically with reading - that people want to access, and so makes other people weirdly snobbish/defensive of it.
First of all, for some books, that's great. Esp, if read by a good voice actor. It can convert a book to radio theater, that's magic.
However, if you're listening while you're driving, or being distracted, you lose the some parts of the picture.
Lastly, not all books are good audio books. Some of them need stopping, reflecting, and some re-reading sometimes.
So, horses for courses I may say.