Consuming nonfiction audio
Some notes about my many-years-long project of optimizing when and how I consume podcasts, audiobooks, and any analogous media:
- This Matt Glassman post inspired me to do more of my walking without audio. He's right: this is great for generating and refining ideas. (It's also probably at least a little bit safer, at least if I'm crossing a bunch of roads.)
- I'm more pessimistic than I used to be about the project of listening to stuff and actually benefiting from it. It's not impossible, just harder than I used to think it is--especially because it competes with thinking-without-listening (see above).
- But I've been listening to Accidental Tech regularly for... at least seven or eight years now. This surprises me a little, because I'm not that into Apple rumors, cars, or other of their main topics. But the production value is high, they know what they're talking about, and they never miss a week. It turns out it's great to be a consumer of something that's consistent and made with real care.
- More generally, production value matters a lot. There are all sorts of college lectures that I've given up on largely because I have to strain to understand them. (Even a little bit of this costs a lot of energy.)
- I've mostly given up on Conversations with Tyler, which would have been an absolute shock to me five years ago. It's partly that I enjoy them but don't feel I benefit enough relative to alternatives. I also think they lost some spark when he switched to mostly-remote interviewing during COVID.
- I mostly don't listen to Thinking Poker, largely because Andrew and Carlos are too good at getting me excited about poker, and although that's fun, these days I really need to be using my leisure-strategic-thinking energy on programming.
- I've long believed that both podcast and episode discovery are broken. It still feels a lot harder than it should to find podcasts I like and (especially) to find episodes of particular interest (either it's obviously special for some reason or someone I really like is a guest).