Tag Archives: audio books

Time to read

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I switched mostly to audio books a few years ago and that multiplied the number of books I consumed significantly. As a slow reader with an internal voice that speaks louder than my internal reading voice, I’ve always found reading both slow and difficult. I can, without exaggeration, read and be so internally distracted that when I catch myself and look back I can’t remember anything on the last 3-4 pages.

Audio books are louder or at least more attention-holding than my internal dialogue and I can set the speed to faster than I’m able to read. Audio books to me are like a reading superpower compared to a paper book.

Except, I’ve struggled of late to get started on a book. I bounce around listening to podcasts, and don’t seem to want to start a new book, be it a novel or educational. I also have 2 paper books without an audio version that I’m wanting to start. So, I feel that I need to dedicate time to a paper book. It’s going to be tough because I get a lot of ‘reading’ done in the car, on the treadmill, and generally on the go.

Now I’ve got to juggle in some book reading. The only time I can see doing this is just before bed. I’m struggling with this decision. Do I really want to start yet another routined habit? Yes. No. Yes.

I’ll give it a try. I want more reading time. I’m just not convinced I’ll commit. I’ll know in about 2 weeks.

Book stacks

As part of our main floor renovation, I moved a bookshelf yesterday. On this shelf I found 4 books that I had put aside to read. On the corner of my desk at work I have another 5. On Audible I have 3 credits, and a large list of books on my wish list, but I am listening to a few books offered for free first, and re-listening to parts of one that I’m developing some lessons for, for my Inquiry Hub students.

I’ve always been a painfully slow reader and so audible has been a wonderful treat. Since I started listening to Audible in 2017, I’ve listened to the equivalent of 1 month and 12 days worth of audio, according to the app. I have 111 books in my collection of which there are only 8 I have yet to read. In that time, I’ve read about 6-7 paper books completely and another 4-6 partially.

My stacks are unlikely to be read… unless I add them to my digital audio stacks. It’s a bit of an awakening to realize this. I don’t read books anymore, I listen to them. For me physical book stacks are nothing more than an audio wish lists. But somehow, I like seeing the stacks, even if I never get to them.

My new approach to learning from books

I’ve always been a slow reader, and so the transition to audio has been a refreshing way to consume more books than if I stuck to reading text. Even so the amount of books I can read is very limited, especially when you consider that a typical audio book runs somewhere between 7 and 12 hours of listening. So I was very interested when a colleague told me about Blinkist, a book summarizing service. He shared a link with alternative summarizing services and I ended up getting a competing service called 12 Minutes. The app chose me when a lifetime membership went on sale for less than 2 years on Blinkist.

I tried this out and I didn’t like it much. Although the summaries are short, I found my attention waned. Informational books devoid of the compelling stories and examples couldn’t hold my attention even for 12 minutes. I was disappointed.

But recently my desire to get through more books increased after reading a Tim Ferris blog post that said,

“We don’t have that much time left to read books. Tim Urban’s The Tail End makes this clear. Based on his calculus, he might only read another 300 books before he dies. He and I are roughly the same age, and Tim is a very fast reader.”

I’m older, and a slower reader than both of them. So I thought, let my try again with a different approach. I opened up my iPad to a sketching app, called Paper, and then opened 12 Minutes and saw the feature book was The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. This is the perfect book because I wanted to read it, it was gifted to me by a parent at my school over 3 years ago, and it sits on my shelf unread, not even on my list of books I have have time for in the near future.

Here are the notes I created while listening to The Lean Startup:

It took longer than 12 minutes. I didn’t time it but I’d guess 20-25 minutes with pausing and reminding. However this book is relatively small at only 8 hours and 38 minutes on Audible… and I likely would never have gotten to it.

With this new two-pronged strategy, I was able to stay focused and take a couple useful ideas from the book. I also have some notes I can come back to later. So unlike my audiobooks that I listen to working out and commuting, I will probably use the 12 Minute App in conjunction with a sketching app, and I’ll see if this new approach to learning from books is something I will stick to?