10 Handy Tips to Make the Best of Your Audiobook Experience
Tried and tested methods from regular Audiobook listeners
A couple of weeks ago when I started listening to audiobooks, I struggled to get the best out of them. Coming from the realm of paperbacks and e-books, I was constantly accusing myself of losing out on a precious book when I chose to consume it in the audiobook format.
I turned to Reddit’s r/audiobooks for comfort. I did receive a few handy tips from Reddit and my audiobook savvy friends. But I also learned that most audiobook newbies faced same the problems I did-some of them even through their fourth or fifth audiobook.
In this article, I’ve compiled the tips I learned from personal experience and the advice put forth by fellow listeners on Reddit into 10 handy tips for audiobook listeners. These tips will greatly benefit you if you’re struggling to get acquainted with a new format of book consumption and will help you get the most out of every audiobook you listen to.
1. Increase the Listening Speed
So you too think tampering with your audiobook speed will make the experience less satisfying? You’re not alone. When I listened to my first audiobook, I stuck to 1X speed for the fear of “losing out on the awesome experience” that so many of my peers talked about. But as I listened along, I noticed my mind wandering between chapters and pauses or when the narrative became slightly less interesting. When I probed my best friend about it, I was relieved when said, “ I usually listen to most audiobooks at 1.3X, unless they’re performative of course.” Reddit user u/GotHuff reinstated this further
Increase the speed. They are often slower than normal speech and makes it easy to have your mind wander
Once you increase your listening speed, you’d find yourself concentrating better and listening effectively for longer spans.
To quote u/BakeEmAwayToyss
I listen on 1.75 and cannot imagine going to 1.0.
How to Apply it
Go to your audiobook app. Next to the play/pause button, there is a speed option with the default listening speed set to “1.00X”. If you click on it, it displays a speed adjusting bar where you can gradually increase the speed to suit your requirement.
As a newbie listener, go from 1X to 1.2X and keep increasing it by 0.1X or 0.2X to settle on a speed that suits you. For me, 1.2X works fine.
2. Decrease the Listening Speed
But wait! Don’t get carried away by the listening limits of the speed bar. Just because there is an option to listen at 2X speed, doesn’t mean you have to listen at those speeds (unless you have exceptionally brilliant processing power, of course). u/Mursu42 puts it correctly.
Don’t force yourself to try and listen at 1.8x even if some other people do, .1 or .2 speed boost is often enough. Experiment.
If you find a fellow listener listening at a higher speed, don’t get carried away. Its because they’ve spent months getting acquainted with the format. Or sometimes, they’re listening to something that requires them to or makes it okay for them to listen at such high speeds.
How to Apply it
Your ideal listening speed is the one at which you’re most comfortable listening. Let that be your 1X- your personal default speed. Spend some time experimenting with speeds to reach it. If need be, increase or decrease it gradually to suit your taste and experience.
3. Listen for a long chunk of time
Just like reading a book for five minutes over 10 days contributes little to an amazing reading experience, listening to an audiobook for a short time hardly delivers enough meat. Don’t make your audiobook experience a bumpy train ride. Resolve to listen for a significant time each time you choose to listen to your audiobook. If need be, set aside specific hours of the day to spend listening instead of idling around.
For instance, I have habituated myself to listen to a few minutes of an audiobook as soon as I wake-up. Instead of letting my mind meander during the half an hour that I spend drinking warm lemon-honey water, brushing my teeth, and washing my face, I’ve learned to kick start my day with an audiobook.
How to Apply it
Initially, it is understandable that concentrating for long hours is hard. Start with 15 minutes first. Any listening spree of less than 15 minutes will be ineffective. Once you’re able to stick to it for 15 minutes, go long. From my personal experience, some of these 15 minutes often stretch longer, usually 20–25 minutes. This contributes to a more wholesome and satisfying listening spree on my part and pumps me up for subsequent listening.
4. Don’t compare it to the paperback experience
In my initial audiobook listening days, I also kept the e-book handy with me to mark quotes. However, when I paused the audiobook and reached out to the e-book, I found myself hovering over the page longer than necessary, taking in all that I had just listened to. I was actually studying how I found the words to be familiar, but not as familiar reading them. A quick Google search told me it is true when they say that audiobook experiences can’t equal the reading experience. Reading and listening to a book, are in fact, two different experiences.
To quote Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke,
On reading
When you read something, you are looking at symbols on a page, and your brain is busy filling in all the blanks. Like the sounds of the voices, the scene, the inflection, the deeper meaning, the plot, etc.
On audiobooks
Because you can’t go back and reread something, you’re much more likely to do a better job of trying to extract the gist of what someone meant when you’re hearing them than when you’re reading.
How to Apply it
When you start out with audiobooks, take some time to pick what you listen to. Your aim should be to settle on something that comes alive as an audiobook. My top 3 picks in this area are:
- Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
- Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy by Douglas Adams
For these books and some others, the audiobook narratives greatly outdo the reading experience.
5. Stay Focused
Audiobooks are notorious for being the best companion during multitasking. However, if you are not able to listen properly while multitasking, you’re likely to walk away with a dissatisfied listening experience. Don’t do that to yourself.
Multitasking isn’t something you have to do with audiobooks. No matter how you choose to listen, you need to focus on what you hear to make it effective. And not everyone listens to audiobooks while multitasking. Some of us choose to listen in silence-just as we prefer reading the paperback or the e-book version-which is fine. The bottom line is that if you can’t focus on your audiobook while doing the household chores, taking the dog for a walk, or on the drive to work or college, don’t. In the words of u/EasternAdventures,
I find I am able to best focus on Audio Books in situations where I have virtually no other distractions (i.e. a task that takes almost no thought)…If I try to listen to Audio Books when doing tasks that take some actual effort, I tend to not retain anything.
No matter how you chose to do it, there is no right or wrong way to listen to an audiobook as long as you stay focused.
How to Apply it
During the initial days of listening, experiment with when you can listen to it effectively. Start with listening to it for 5 minutes on times you feel you can. If it works, take notice of the time and the duration for which you were able to focus without getting distracted. Then, use this time of the day or the week to commit to regular listening.
For instance, I found it easy to listen to an audiobook every day for 20 minutes on my post-lunch walk. So I stuck to it. Also, I don’t trouble myself with listening while I scroll on my phone as I find it hard to focus while doing so.
6. Choose something you’d like
Audiobooks are new grounds. Listening to something appeasing. It will make sure you look forward to the experience. It will ease you into this new format and help you get acquainted.
My first audiobook was a recommendation from a friend who has the exact same taste in books as me. Hence, when she chose “Daisy Jones and the Six”, which was her first audiobook, as my first audiobook, she knew I’d like it as much as she did. And she was right.
So many of my other audiobook listening peers started with Harry Potter books. Stephen Fry’s amazing narration kicks the magical books' experience a notch higher with audiobooks. u/Amblonyx testifies to this claim.
I started out by listening to young adult books I had read before. My first audio book was Harry Potter. That helped me get used to the format and helped me train my brain to focus.
How to Apply it
Choose your first few audiobooks carefully. Pick something from a genre you absolutely love. All audiobook apps have selections categorized into genres. Go to your genre and explore your options. If you find an audiobook interesting enough, go for it. Additionally, you could also ask an audiobook listener friend-who shares the same taste as you in books-to recommenced you an audiobook.
7. Choose something you’re comfortable with
If you’re wary of spoiling a new book experience just because you listened to it as an audiobook, don’t. Save it for when you get comfortable with the format.
Comfort comes with regular listening so let those first few audiobooks be something you already know of or you’ve already read. Examples include books made into movies you’ve already seen or books you read as a child and loved. Not only will these listens free you of any preconceived fears and notions, but they will also help you get acquainted with and get into the practice of listening to audiobooks without sacrificing a new book you would have otherwise freely enjoyed.
u/jes0308 has the perfect piece for the kind of books new listeners should focus on.
Start with something you’ve read before, or are familiar with. Avoid lengthy, detail oriented books, such lord of the rings, ASOIAF, Stephen king. Look for something that is 5–6 hours long. That way it can be finished fairly quickly, most likely it won’t be too detail oriented, and it can help you focus.
How to Apply it
When searching for an audiobook, look for familiar titles. If you can look at a book cover and predict the storyline, go for it. If you’re especially afraid of experimenting with new titles, listen to a few such audiobooks before jumping onto something new.
8. Use the rewind button with discretion
I remember reading somewhere that the rewind button in audiobook apps was made for a reason. What I didn’t realize is that I had gone overboard with it. So much so that once, I took a day to finish a 20-minute chapter.
As a new audiobook listener, you should understand that just like everything else, even rewind buttons should be used in a limit. Granted the prospect of rewinding is empowering to a new listener, but understand that overusing it has its own lop sides. Firstly, rewinding demands interruptions in listening. For those of us listening on phones, it also means we’re highly likely to lose ourselves into the world of notifications if we as much as glance at the screen. Secondly, a piece of information might not be as important to the book as we are treating it to be. There are parts to the audiobook where rewinding does you more harm than going over it less attentively than you would.
How to Apply it
Understand the purpose of the rewind button. During the initial listening days, set a limit to the number of times you will allow yourself to rewind one particular audiobook. This way, you are less likely to take your listening for granted and get used to using the rewind button only when it is extremely necessary. This will ultimately contribute to practicing uninterrupted and focused-listening in the long run.
9. Don’t listen with a resistant mindset
If I had a penny for the number of times I’ve heard naysayers say, “Audiobooks aren’t for me. I CANNOT listen to audiobooks”, I’d be a millionaire. Sigh.
If you too are stepping into the audiobook realm with such negative notions, chuck them out of the window before everything else. As a new listener who has chosen to get acquainted with audiobooks, embrace it with a fresh mindset. Do not give up unless you have tried everything you could. Just like everything else, getting used to audiobooks requires some molding of habits and some practice and persistence. u/MistbornLlama proves that if you choose to do it a lot and adapt to doing it right, then you can make audiobooks a part of your life.
I had this same issue when I first started listening. I didn’t find any shortcuts to make it easier, rather, I found that persistence in listening was the key. It took a lot of rewinding but eventually, I learned how to do it passively.
That you give up on audiobooks is justified only if you’ve tried, read plenty of them, and are then educated enough to proclaim that the format doesn’t suit you and you’d rather stick to the good old words on paperbacks.
How to Apply it
Avoid reading any audiobook threads or comments with negative proclamations. If you do come across such comments, take them with a pinch of salt before forming any preconceived notions in your mind. Also, if you encounter any difficulty while listening, talk to a community of people or your friends, and look for ways to solve it before quitting and dampening your spirits.
10. Don’t listen to it like a podcast
To understand why audiobooks are different from podcasts, we need to understand what podcasts are.
To quote “The Podcast Host”,
A podcast is a series of spoken word, audio episodes, all focused on a particular topic or theme, like cycling or startups.
Essentially, podcasts are all centered around a theme. Hence, with podcasts, your brain already knows what to expect after reading the description. With audiobooks, the blurb is designed only to give you an introduction. You don’t know what unfolds unless you read the book.
To treat audiobooks as they are, separate your ideas of podcasts from those of audiobooks first. Then, understand that given the definition of these two listening mediums, audiobooks will take up more of your attention span as compared to podcasts. In the words of u/iwontrememberanyway,
Podcasts are better for chores because it doesn’t matter if you don’t pay attention the whole time.
With audiobooks, you can replace active attention with passive attention but cannot eliminate attention altogether.
How to Apply it
Firstly, don’t mix the idea of podcasts and audiobooks. If you’re already familiar with podcasts, read why the two formats are different. Then, save audiobooks for the time when you can concrete and listen to podcasts during those times when it doesn’t require much concentration.
The Bottom Line
Audiobooks are the latest rave in the bibliophile market. The sheer number of people listening to audiobooks has enticed every reader to try their hands at it. Hence, given the high hopes with which we approach audiobooks, it is easy to get disappointed if we are not able to get it right in the first few tries. However, understand that most people have faced similar problems as you. Tap into their experience reserve to see how they overcame their listening obstacles. With some persistence and help from the audiobook listening community, it wouldn’t take you long to get acquainted with the magical world of audiobooks and call yourself a proud audiobook listener.
If you like this, you might also like:
Follow me on Medium for more of my stories
