Comment by torgoguys | Hacker News Reader

Comment by torgoguys | Hacker News Reader

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You work your way up to it. Open up a podcast app and start listening at 1.5x. After a while (days to weeks), that becomes comfortable. Then work your way up to 2.0x. Once you're at that point, listening to familiar shows (familiar people/voices), at 1.0x makes them sound drunk. They seem. to. speak. so. slooow.

Some podcasts I listen at 3x which feels near my limit of comfort (comprehension drops off at speeds higher than that), but I suspect nearly any normal person can get used to 2x speed. When you are, you can absorb twice as much information in the same amount of time.

(The above applies to talk type podcasts. Music is best at 1x, and dramatizations and such are often best left at 1x to get correct pacing).

I've tried going faster but found that I had to concentrate too hard on listening to leave time for reflection during the listening, which is the whole point for me of listening podcasts. I wonder if a blind person struggles with similar issues, where they have to dose the speed reading to allow them to actually think about what they heard.

Instead of listening to a podcast/audiobook once on normal speed, you could try listening to it twice on double speed.

* Especially audiobooks generally have only one core idea so even if you miss a part, you're not missing much.

* By listing twice, you will 'revisit' the topic, increasing comprehension.

* Most podcasts/audiobooks actually don't have a lot of new ideas (especially after you've heard a lot of them), so in those cases you're only wasting half the time.

When you listen to a podcast at 3x do you focus solely on the podcast or are you able to do something else too? For example cooking? Or driving?

I pretty routinely listen to podcasts and audiobooks at 2-2.5x, and I could understand the English audio just fine. Not sure that I'd _want_ to listen to it that quickly, but I can understand why if that were your interface with your computer that you would.

I wish my Roku box would provide a speedup option, as well as my Comcast DVR.

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