Changing my Reading Strategy

[Davino]

Books are quite time consuming and I got mid-to-low value for the huge amount of focused time and energy spent.

I've transitioned to audiobooks for 80% of my input. I still do 20% reading for dense books that are worthy of my full dedicated time.

Sharing this in case you've felt stuck in your reading habits and want something to speed it up. I'm using audible, tried a few before but I'm finally sticking with that one.

[Raze]

Audible doesn’t speed it up when your reading speed is faster than listening 

[LordFall]

Don't you find that you forget a lot of the stuff in audiobooks? I like to take notes when I read and I listened to half of the Fiat Standard as an audiobook and I recall general trends but I really mostly remember like 3 main points out of hours of listening. 

I would highly question auditory retention but I think for less important books it makes sense if it's more inspirational than technical. 

Edited 15 hours ago by LordFall

[Ulax]

When I listen to audiobooks, I tend to daydream

[Davino]

15 hours ago, Raze said:

Audible doesn’t speed it up when your reading speed is faster than listening 

Yes that could be the case, but the point is different: I can't read a book while walking, cooking, or driving, but I can listen to an audiobook.

[Davino]

14 hours ago, LordFall said:

Don't you find that you forget a lot of the stuff in audiobooks? I like to take notes when I read and I listened to half of the Fiat Standard as an audiobook and I recall general trends but I really mostly remember like 3 main points out of hours of listening. 

I would highly question auditory retention but I think for less important books it makes sense if it's more inspirational than technical. 

Most books don't need that level of attention and retention, it's about having sudden insights that precipitate over hours of listening, exposing yourself to good media/input, learning new ways of thinking and pattern recognition etc.

For heavy books I still prefer to read calmly, I just discovered there are very few books worth it of that.

[Davino]

11 hours ago, Ulax said:

When I listen to audiobooks, I tend to daydream

And do you daydream without audiobooks?

[Lyubov]

There was a similar discussion here a while back. I went in the opposite direction. I read mostly everything now. Yeah, books give diminishing returns after a while and you have to be strategic with what you pick. I even reread a few books instead of new ones because they were so helpful. I wouldn’t just commit to a book unless I’ve put it through vetting. I don’t believe I’m missing out on anything not being spontaneous about my book picks. Unless you have a super mind and are able to run through books like an athlete can run a kilometer it’s better to be intentional with what you pick. For audio books, to be honest if it falls into audio book territory it’s probably not good enough to be taken seriously anyways and could be supplemented with YouTube videos or research with AI. I treat anything as an audio book basically as a podcast where you can drift in and out of listening. 

Edited 46 minutes ago by Lyubov

[Joseph Maynor]

It is hard for me to read books anymore like I used to.  Things have changed for me in that way.