How to efficiently consume a podcast
Posted by Ronnie Holm on November 25th, 2006
How often do you find yourself listening to or viewing podcasts from ITConversations, .Net Rocks, Channel 9, or dnrTV?
Now, how often do you crank up your playback speed?
I’ve been conducting some un-scientific experiments with increasing the playback speed with Media Player (only supports 1.5x) and my mp3-player (supports variable speed).
My conclusion is that listening to or viewing a podcast at about 1.5x the original speed is really the optimal trade-off between time consumption, not stressing the brain, and still be able to comprehend the contents.
And I save 15 minutes of every hour consuming podcasts.
Just make sure you don’t start speaking 1.5x faster because you listen to too many podcasts.
Update, August 6, 2007: Steve Pavlina describes many of the same thoughts, although he’s an advocate of a much higher speed. Steve’s blog entry mentions that “… in the latest version of Windows Media Player, click the arrow below “Now Playing.” Then click Enhancements -> Show Play Speed Settings” as a way to bring up a speed slider.
