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Comment by brightball | Hacker News Reader

I’ve tried many times. Just can’t focus on the audio. I’ll start thinking about something and the next thing I know 20 minutes will have passed without hearing a word.

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Try starting with something suspense based that does not have convoluted writing and really grabs your attention, like a Dan Brown book or Harry Potter (read by Stephen Fry). Also, go for the professional readings (i.e. not most of Librivox) and pay careful attention to what reviews say about the reader, as their performance is essential for comprehension. Play around with listening speed a bit (both too slow and too fast won’t work, depending on the material). I could easily increase material complexity after getting through suspense-based books.

I could not get into audiobooks (even after years of listening to scientific talk podcasts) until I got hold of Origin by Dan Brown in an Audible trial, and ended up being gripped by the 20 hour book for two weeks straight. It has been 15+ audiobooks from various sources per year for me since then, which has really enriched my life. Retention is better since I finish the books that can be integrated with various activities not requiring verbal thinking way faster.

Another trick is to start with podcasts. I still remember stumbling upon hardcore history podcast. It was so good that I just walked hours randomly listening to the series on Mongols.

Generally podcasts are lighter than books. And generally fiction books are lighter than non fiction.

I have the exact same issue. If it’s video, my eyes (and brain) are occupied and not easily distracted. But audio alone, unless it’s like radio where you don’t care if you miss something, has been difficult to keep attention on.

Unlike eBooks, where you can easily go back by scanning with your eyes, audiobooks can only provide you a way to quickly go back in time, not context (unless the context is directly related to time, like rewinding for 10 or 20 seconds, for example).

I’ve been thinking of listening to audiobooks while doing chores and not bothering about missing some words or sentences. But I’d have to choose a casual work so that I don’t regret missing anything.

I find if I set the playback speed to 1.3-1.5x, I’m forced to listen much more closely.

Give it a shot! It’s maybe a bit like that Thinking Fast And Slow story about the kids who scored better on tests with blurry questions.

I do to this too. I find 1.5 is about as far as I can go without the voices getting too distorted.

Another positive..I find that I am able to understand different accents easier now. IRL. Perhaps I have now trained myself to pay attention to sound.

I don’t know if it’s related but I can think faster and I type at blazing speeds ever since I switched to faster speeds on audiobooks

Listening to audiobooks while riding a bicycle worked well for me. Driving, walking and any other physical activity that can be done in "zombie mode" works well with audiobooks, radio.

No longer use a bike since I moved.

By any chance do you have adhd? Because same.

If I do it’s not diagnosed.

Yep, I have to physically read books if I want to ingest any information from them.

I used to retain things that I read very well.

Now I'm prone to tuning out the stream of text the same way I (and presumably brightball) tune out the stream of speech from an audiobook. If I want to be sure not to miss something, I need to read aloud. :(

Same here. This is also the problem I have with podcasts.

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