Hacker News Reader

I do the same, but at 2 to 4x speed depending on the book, that cuts down the time significantly. I don't listen while working though, as I work in software not in the other fields that were mentioned in the answer to a sibling comment which are more monotonous in nature perhaps.

View on HN

> 2 to 4x speed

Wow, how do you even process it at that speed? I normally listen at 1.2x, but feel like if I hit 1.5x, maybe 1.8x if it is a really slow narrator, I'm maxing out. I mainly am listening to it while I'm running though, so 5-20% focus on that depending on traffic or if I have to cross streets, the rest of my focus on the book. Are you just sitting and listening to it at that speed focused in on it, or are you just abled to digest it at that speed?

Practice. The more you listen the faster you can go. I can digest it at that speed, yes. Sometimes I watch shows like that especially if there's a lot of filler content, anime in particular. No one has time to go through a thousand episode.

some peoples brains just operate faster, like have a faster clockspeed in the same way CPUs do. i feel like people who can read extremely fast also correlate strongly to people who can listen to audio very fast. my partner is an unbelievably fast reader, like the fastest i've ever seen, but she also has a phd in maths and is generally brilliant, i have no idea where im going with this. some peoples brains are just wired for high amounts of data bandwidth. but also practice, and it also depends on the original speed of the speaker/content.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com