Speaker 1 (00:00): So over the last few years,
I have listened to over 165 audiobooks, and they've been a total game changer for how
quickly I've been able to learn new stuff. So in this video, we're going to go through my four
step method with eight tips that have helped me to learn from audiobooks more efficiently. Part one,
listening to books versus reading books. Speaker 1 (00:15):
Now there's been some discussion on the internet about whether listening to audiobooks or
reading physical books like which of those counts as reading? Some people argue that it's actually
not the same because well, we're listening rather than reading, and there's something special about
reading a book, whether it's on Kindle or in other formats that counts as reading.
Some people also say that allegedly, we absorb information better when we're reading rather
than when we're listening. Speaker 1 (00:34):
My sense is that this whole reading versus listening debate kind of misses the point
because really we shouldn't be thinking of audio books as being a substitute for physical books,
but instead, a way to compliment our reading habit in other areas of our life. And the way
I think of it is that there's broadly three ways in which audiobooks compliment physical books.
The first one is speed. Speaker 1 (00:49):
Often we can listen to things a lot faster than we can necessarily read those things. Now, we
all have 10 times more books on our recommended or to be read shelves than we're ever going to read
in our lifetimes. And my feeling is that if an audio book is 12 hours long and if I listen to it
at three times speed, well then it takes me four hours to listen to a 12 hour long audiobook.
Speaker 1 (01:05): I know this is super controversial.
We're going to be talking more about the nuances around the speed listening further in the video.
And people often ask like, what do you actually gain from listening to an audiobook at double or
triple speed? Which brings me on to point two of how audiobooks compliment physical books,
which is the idea of quick sampling. Speaker 1 (01:18):
Now, listening to audiobook is a great way of actually sampling a book before you decide to buy
the physical version on Kindle or in paperback. If after listening to some or all of the audio book,
you decide that you actually don't need or want to read the physical version, then suddenly you've
saved time and you don't then have to read this physical book. I went through my Audible and I've
listened to 165 audio books, but of them I've only bought and read the physical version of somewhere
between 20 and 30. Speaker 1 (01:39):
And thirdly, audio books compliment physical books because they're a way of reducing friction. And
the main way they do this is that they allow multitasking. Like I've listened to so many
audio books in my time at the gym and in my time commuting and driving and doing stuff around the
house. And in all those cases, I'm listening to an audiobook where otherwise I would've been
listening to music or nothing at all instead. Speaker 1 (01:56):
Part two, my workflow for learning from audiobooks. So my workflow for learning
from audiobooks is split up into four main steps. Step one is intention. Step two is selection. Step
three is consumption, and step four is processing. All right, let's start with step one, intention.
And really the idea here is like, what is the intention behind listening to this particular
audiobook? Am I listening to the audiobook for pleasure or am I listening to the audiobook for
some kind of efficient learning? Speaker 1 (02:18):
Now there's absolutely nothing wrong with listening to audiobooks for pleasure. I'd say
around 50% of my audiobook listening time has been fiction rather than non-fiction and I'm listening
to the fiction or reading the fiction purely for pleasure. I'm not intending to learn anything or
trying to be productive with my audiobook listening when I'm specifically intending
to listen for pleasure. Speaker 1 (02:34):
Honestly, it can be one of the greatest things in life like listening to an audiobook while driving
while lying on the sofa, or even while playing PlayStation if you're really into that sort of
dopamine hit multitasking method. And in this context, you can just do what works for you.
Speaker 1 (02:44): Now for me personally, again, this
might be controversial to some people, but for me personally, I do find I enjoy fiction books more
when I listen to them at two time speed rather than one time speed because I feel the one time
speed narrations are just a bit too slow and the two time speed is like, okay, this feels decent,
I'm getting all the value from the fiction, I'm able to comprehend all of it very, very easily,
and I'm still enjoying it along the way. Speaker 1 (03:03):
And if you haven't yet started listening to audiobooks, I'd recommend starting with fiction
rather than non-fiction. Nonfiction, to be honest, can be a little bit dry. But if you start with
fiction, something like Stardust by Neil Gaiman, Neil Gaiman is an incredible narrator, he narrates
the book so well, it's fantastic. Or the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson, there's all sorts
of fantastic fiction audiobooks, and it's a great gateway drug into the space and then if you want,
you can start going down the nonfiction route further down the line if you like.
Speaker 1 (03:25): By the way, quick thing,
we've nearly hit 3 million subscribers on this YouTube channel which is fricking insane. And so
to commemorate that milestone, we're going to be doing a massive giveaway and all the details for
that are going to be on my Instagram page. So that'll be linked in the video description if
you want to follow me on Instagram, that will give you all the details closer to the time.
Speaker 1 (03:40): Yeah, back to the video. All right. So now
assuming you want to listen to nonfiction for the sake of learning, that brings us onto step two,
which is selection. And really what we're trying to do here is to select the right book. And my
philosophy here is having a very, very, very wide net, but a very narrow filter. So by wide net,
I generally mean that my threshold for getting a book on Audible or getting an audio book is
really, really low. Speaker 1 (03:58):
And so anytime, almost anytime I'll get a book recommendation from a friend or I'll see a YouTube
video or a podcast or someone on Twitter who I follow recommends a particular book, I would
just almost without thinking buy the audiobook version of it because I know it's so easy for
me to listen to that audiobook and to at least get a sample of what the real book is like.
Speaker 1 (04:13): And that helps me cast the net wide,
but then there's a narrow filter beyond that. So usually at around the half an hour mark, half an
hour into the book, that's when I decide, okay, is this book still continuing to be worth my time?
And is this a book that I actually want to listen to all the way through or until I get bored or do
I just want to abandon it completely right now? Speaker 1 (04:28):
Now again, this might be controversial if you are the sort of person that thinks a book is a
hallowed object and oh, an author has put in work into this book, therefore, you are obligated to
watch the whole thing. But it's like you aren't obligated to watch a whole movie just because
you started, you aren't obligated to read a whole article or even to watch this whole YouTube video
just because you started. Speaker 1 (04:44):
Equally, you are absolutely not obligated to read a book just because you bought it in physical book
or Kindle or audio book format. And to be honest, now that I'm actually writing a book for myself,
I know how much work goes into the introduction and the first two or three chapters initially
compared to the rest of the book, because every publisher knows that most readers don't really
read beyond chapter three of a book. Speaker 1 (05:03):
And so really in nonfiction, generally what the authors are doing is that they are front loading
all of the really good stuff in the introduction in the first three chapters. And so if you don't
get a lot of value out of the introduction in the first three chapters, you are probably not going
to then get amazing value out of the rest of the book. And that's totally fine. That's not to say
the book sucks, but it is to say that some books are just going to land with us better at different
parts of our life. Speaker 1 (05:22):
So maybe you can come back to that book further down the line, or maybe it was more relevant
to you in your past. And that's totally fine, nothing wrong with that, right? So at this point,
we've cast the net wide, we've got a narrow filter and now we have an audiobook that
we're actually listening to all the way through, which brings us to step three, consumption.
Speaker 1 (05:35): Now having done this for the last few
years and listened to over a hundred nonfiction audiobooks that I've genuinely learned stuff from,
I've got four main tips to help you kind of learn more efficiently as you are consuming audiobooks.
The first one is to actively choose the right kind of multitasking activity that you want to do.
Most of us, when we're listening to audiobooks, we don't just sit there and just listen to the
whole audiobook, we generally listen to it while we're doing something else.
Speaker 1 (05:55): And the key thing here is that you
want to choose a multitasking activity that you could do completely on autopilot. So for example,
if that's like cleaning the house or doing the laundry, or driving to and from work,
these things that we do so often that we don't really need to think about it because as soon as
you start doing anything, even vaguely cognitively demanding, that is when the learning completely
goes out the window because really we want the kind of learning part of our mind to be focused
on the audiobook rather than on how we're going to get that crinkle out of our show.
Speaker 1 (06:20): Tip number two is to fiddle with
the speed to the point where it's fast enough, but also comfortable enough to be able to absorb the
information and to learn it effectively. Now this varies massively depending on A, the speed of the
narrator and also depending on the complexity of the topic that you're trying to learn. Now,
broadly the nonfiction books I listen to fall into three categories and depending on these three
categories, that dictates generally what kind of speed I'm going to be comfortable listening
to the audiobook at. Speaker 1 (06:43):
The first one is kind of self-helpy type books, which I'm defining as
I am listening to this book because I'm hoping to gain principles or strategies and tools that I'm
actually going to apply to my life. So these are generally things in the realm of pop psychology
or productivity or business or leadership or management. The reason I'm reading these books
is because I want to apply stuff from them. Speaker 1 (07:01):
Now these are the books that I normally start off listening to at 1.5 times speed. Basically
for every single narrator, one time speed is just way too slow for me personally. Your knowledge may
vary. So I always start off at 1.5 and if I feel that, okay, I'm getting the message and I can very
comfortably keep up with this, then I switch to two times speed. Usually these sorts of books
are written for clarity so they're actually fairly simple to understand. They're not normally using
really, really big fancy words. Speaker 1 (07:23):
One of the exceptions to this is Happy by Darren Brown, which actually uses a lot of complicated
words. It's a self-help book about stoicism and happiness, but it's really hard to listen to at
2X speed because it's just kind of complicated. So really it's about fiddling the speed and
getting to a point where it's fast enough while still being comfortable to listen to. The second
big area of non-fiction books I listen to for learning are general interest books.
Speaker 1 (07:42): These are books that are about an
interesting topic that I want to learn more about, but I'm not necessarily interested in absorbing
every single detail so that I can apply it to my life in some way. For example, recently I've been
interested in the idea of globalisation. So I came across a book called The Globalisation Paradox,
which is kind of interesting. Speaker 1 (07:56):
And so again, I'm just trying to fiddle with the speed to make it comfortable, but I'm also not too
annoyed if I don't catch absolutely every single word, because what I'm trying to do is just get a
general gist of, hey, let me explore this topic of globalisation a little bit more. And so for
a book like that, I was happy listening to it at 2.5 times speed or potentially even 3 times speed,
depending on like the speed of the narrator. Speaker 1 (08:14):
And finally, the third big category of non-fiction books that I listen to for learning are deep
learning books where I'm like, okay, the reason I'm learning this is because I'm so
interested in the topic that I want to actually absorb everything I can from this book and I want
to potentially be able to explain it to friends further down the line. So right now, for me,
this is philosophy themed books. Speaker 1 (08:30):
There's this philosopher called Alan Watts who I've recently discovered who's absolutely sick,
but I want to deep learn that kind of stuff. I want to really be able to understand
and get into Alan Watts' mind and really understand his take on stuff. And therefore,
I actually start listening to those at one time speed and try and force myself to stay
somewhere between one times and 1.5 times, because I know that really, as stuff happens slowly,
even if it feels too slow for me, the deep learning is happening behind the scenes.
Speaker 1 (08:53): And as I'm rehearsing the things that the author
is saying in the audio book, as I'm thinking, actively thinking about what's being said,
then it's just, I don't know, in my mind, forming more connections and helping me figure out, oh,
okay, cool. I would explain it to my friend, Jamie in this specific way. Right, tip number three for
getting the most out of consuming audiobooks is to recognise when your mind starts to wander. This is
always going to happen. Speaker 1 (09:13):
It's going to vary depending on the book and the topic and the narrator and your mood and
the speed of narration, but whenever I find my mind wandering and I think, oh, the words
are coming in one ear, but they're going out the other, I don't really know what I'm listening to,
at that point. I either rewind back a few kind of like a few minutes so I'd be like, "Okay,
cool," and I get back into it. Speaker 1 (09:29):
But if this happens more than once or twice, then I'll know, okay, cool. My mind is wondering
right now, I'm not going to continue to force myself to listen to this audiobook. Instead,
I'm going to close the audiobook, maybe pick up another fiction audiobook instead,
something like that, potentially even listen to music, potentially even just be in silence with
my own thoughts because I know right now my mind is moving too fast to actually bother continuing
to keep up with this audiobook. Speaker 1 (09:48):
And finally tip number four for consuming audiobooks is guilt free abandonment. And
this is where if I find my mind wandering more than once or twice in a listing session, and
then the next day or the next week, I come back to the same audiobook and I continue to find my mind
wandering from it, usually I'm like, all right, cool. This audiobook isn't doing it for me.
Speaker 1 (10:04): It's not to say it's a bad audiobook, but I'm just
going to completely abandon it without feeling guilty about it at all. And certainly in the past,
I used to feel guilty about not finishing a book, not like abandoning a book, but to be honest,
if it's not doing it for me, life is too short to be listening to books that I'm
just sort of mind wandering and I'm not getting the full vibe out of at the end of the day.
Speaker 1 (10:20): And really this is an
important point about learning from anything, whether it's books or textbooks or audio books,
or even lectures and videos and podcasts, you can always abandon it once you feel you've gotten
value out of it, or if you feel like you're not getting value out of it rather than feeling like
you have to force it. I'm not about forcing. I'm just about working with our natural ebb and flow
of energy and working with our natural ebb and flow of interest almost like a sine wave.
Speaker 1 (10:41): All right, let's now move
on to step four, which is the processing stage of learning from audiobooks. Now a real downside
of audiobooks is that it's genuinely very hard to take notes if you're trying to learn stuff
from audiobooks. And honestly, I think this is one of the main reasons why people for learning
often prefer reading rather than listening because when you're reading, you can actually take notes
and absorb stuff as you go along. Speaker 1 (10:57):
But the key that I find to actually learning properly from audiobooks is to find a way to
take notes during the process. Now there's a few different ways that you can do this.
You could potentially use the bookmarking function that's built into Audible. By the way,
this is not sponsored by Audible, I wish it were, but it's not. You could use the bookmark
function in Audible and that saves that 30 second period that you snippet it out.
Speaker 1 (11:15): Some people I know find this helpful. I don't
personally find it helpful because it's always way too much of a faff to actually revisit my
bookmarks and re-listen to those bits. And then be like, "Oh, but the real bit I wanted to bookmark
was a minute before, rather than 30 seconds before, now I have to go to the timestamp of the
audiobook." It's just a real nightmare so I don't really find that particularly helpful myself.
Speaker 1 (11:31): The second option, which is
one that I do is to actually genuinely take your own notes while you're listening to the audiobook.
Now there's basically two main ways that I do this. The first one is if I'm listening to an
audiobook in a place where I'm able to pause it and get out my phone, i.e, not when I'm driving,
then I will pause the audio book, I will get out my phone and in Apple Notes, I have a book notes
folder and I'll just sort of write down a few things on my phone, a few bullet points from
what I've taken away if I want to take notes on a particular section of the audio book.
Speaker 1 (11:55): Alternatively, if I can't get out my phone
or I can't be bothered to get out my phone and I still want to take a note from something I've
heard in the audio book, often what I will do is I'll open up the app draughts on my Apple Watch,
which allows me to dictate stuff like audio into my watch, which is what I can do while driving.
Speaker 1 (12:09): So I'll say something like,
"Hey, just listening to nine lies about work. I think it's chapter number four and they're talking
about blah, blah, blah. They're talking about have praise and feedback, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah. So yeah, worth revisiting that bit." And then that will get saved to my draught
inbox, which then syncs to. It syncs across all my devices, my Mac, my iPhone, my iPad, again,
not sponsored at all, I wish it were. Speaker 1 (12:26):
But then whenever I want, whenever I can be bothered, whenever I feel like it, then I can
go through my draught inbox and be like, "All right, cool. So this was a note from nine lies
about work, let's just copy and paste that into my Apple Notes thingy for that particular book." But
then beyond taking notes as I go along the book, if I really want to genuinely learn from the book
and take more stuff from it, I will just buy the book in physical copy or in Kindle version.
Speaker 1 (12:46): Generally, I prefer Kindle
version because then you can highlight, you can synchronise, you can take notes on the computer,
which is way quicker than taking notes by hand. But sometimes there are some books where it's
just nice to have the physical copy of it and take notes in the margin. I don't do that very often,
but it is nice to do very, very occasionally. Speaker 1 (13:00):
And beyond buying the physical book or buying the version on Kindle, if I really want to continue
to kind of get the most out of it, usually I'll turn it into an episode of Book Club, the series
on this channel where we talk about books and I summarise books. And generally I find that I
gain so much more from a book and I genuinely learn from it when I get to the point where I can
actually explain it to someone else. Speaker 1 (13:18):
And so for me, that involves basically either writing an email newsletter about it or writing
a tweet thread about it or making a Book Club video where I summarise the book. Now, if you're
interested in the specific workflow, the specific process that I use for taking notes from books,
and you are a massive nerd like me, then you might like to check out my workflow series which
is available on Nebula. Speaker 1 (13:34):
If you haven't heard by now, Nebula is an independent streaming platform that's built by
me and a bunch of other creators. And on Nebula, we can put really niche stuff like a very specific
video about the workflow that I use from taking notes from books and audiobooks and stuff without
having to worry about, is it mainstream enough to appeal to the YouTube algorithm? It's not trying
to be a competitor to YouTube, it's literally just a place where we can put stuff where
it might be useful to some people in our audience, but not necessarily to the whole crowd.
Speaker 1 (13:55): And so on Nebula, I've got
my exclusive workflow series, which talks about this kind of nerdy stuff and I also have my older,
deep dive interview series. So back in lockdown, I did a bunch of remote interviews with really cool
people around the internet. And while I've started a new podcast, the old episodes, the interviews I
did a year ago are still ridiculously valuable and only available in Nebula for you to listen to.
Speaker 1 (14:13): If that sounds good and you'd
like to get access to this exclusive library of my own content along with exclusive content
from a bunch of other creators that you might be familiar with, then the easiest way to sign up to
Nebula is to actually sign up to Curiosity Stream who are very kindly sponsoring this
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Speaker 1 (14:29): And on Curiosity Stream,
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So less than $15 a year for incredible high quality high budget documentaries, along with some
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And if you sign up for an account on Curiosity Stream, then you'll get your Nebula login details
emailed to you, and it's going to be fun and exciting. So thank you very much Curiosity
Stream for sponsoring this video and thank you very much for watching. If you enjoyed this video
and you'd like to learn more about this idea of speed listening, check out this video over here,
which talks specifically about how I got into speed listening and how you can get into it as
well, along with a bunch of tips to help you listen to stuff faster, if that kind of thing
is up your street. Otherwise, have a great day and I'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye.