Your seven-day week is totally filled to the brim. You wish you could have another day to focus on getting ahead by learning about new topics, keeping up with what’s going on in your industry or just relaxing.
If you can listen to talk/news radio programs or make phone calls, and at the same time do something else, such as driving, house chores, exercising or routine shopping, then, you can gradually build up to get a full extra day (or more) in your week out of this ability. Podcasts are an easy picking towards taking advantage of your parallelizable time.
Basics: What are Podcasts and how do you get them?
Podcasts are (mostly) free downloadable audio shows in a myriad of languages which you can subscribe and listen to. If there is a topic you are interested in, there most likely is one or more podcasts shows on that topic.
A common way (as of this writing) to keep up with podcasts is to have a podcatcher app on your smartphone, which keeps track of subscribed show feeds, which in turn contain the individual episodes. The podcatcher app will playback the episodes as well, by either streaming them, or downloading to the phone’s memory first. Each episode corresponds to an audio file (usually in MP3 format) and its size can vary from a few megabytes to several hundreds.
For iOS, you can easily start with the Apple Podcasts app. For Android, I recommend the Podcast Addict app. Some other non-podcast focused apps, such as Spotify, also have podcast listening functionality. Try different podcatchers until you have found one that suits you. After you have installed your podcatcher app:
1. Browse through the directory of shows or use the search feature.
2. Subscribe to shows of your interest.
3. Start listening!
Level Up: Accelerating content and adjusting topics to your daily energy focus shifts
Once you have gotten the hang of using your chosen podcatcher app and in which contexts of your day you can effectively parallelize listening to your catalog of shows, there are a few boosts you can get without much effort.
For starters, most podcatcher apps nowadays can time shift (accelerate) content, keeping the pitch correct. For instance, if a podcast episode at the regular 1.0x speed takes 20 minutes to listen to, accelerating it to 2.0x will reduce the time to listen to it in half. This way you can consume two shows in same amount of time you’d only consume one. Remain on guard not to go greedy on this feature, as some podcast hosts and guests might speak in an unfamiliar accent or the content may be too complex to gulp down at such high speeds. Adjust accordingly.
Another simple adjustment, which can take several iterations to master, is choosing when and where to listen to each show. The purpose is to effectively retain and enhance the usefulness of the content you are listening to by aligning moods and contexts. This will vary significantly amongst individuals, considering their subscriptions catalog, how their days look and what is the desired outcome of the overall daily/weekly listening experience.
To give an example, I usually start my workdays off with inspirational content, changing to work-related content an hour or so before starting work. Then, after work, I switch to leisure/hobby content, making sure to savor those at 1.0x. When I’m engaged in more cognitively demanding tasks, I switch to listening to music in the background (sometimes in podcast form too).
Each podcatcher app has different ways to shift the kinds of content you are listening to. Either by adjusting a manual playlist, using categories/channels or some other feature which can go by another name. Explore your podcatcher app to find out how.
Beyond Podcasts: Audiobooks, online classes, conferences, video-to-audio, etc.
There are other sources of parallelizable content which you can consume that are not available in podcast form. Usually they require other non-podcatcher apps to play them back, may require purchasing (most Audiobooks), manual download, transcoding (for the more technically inclined) and other means to get access to them. My recommendation is to remain on the lookout and integrate them into your routine as you see fit.
Make the most out of your 8th day in the week, and most importantly, be sure to enjoy it!
