Exactly half a year ago, I published my first blog post here called How to consume over 30 books a month/365 books a year.

Six months later, the process has been largely the same, with a few modifications. I still spend many hours consuming books and articles to advance my understanding.

Why listening is more practical than reading

When you have to read, you cannot do much else. You can do other activities that do not require much thinking when you listen. You can do whatever shores you need to do: cooking, dishes, cleaning, running, weight-lifting, walking, driving (if safely!), gardening, etc.

Because you must do all the chores anyway, listening does not take extra time. Instead of blocking off time to read (which you do not have, let's be honest), you are letting the information come to you naturally.

My current tools are

• Scribd (for only $8 a month, you get access to a huge library of audiobooks)

• Audible (if not on Scribd)

• Pocket (this reading app can narrate articles for you. If you have Pocket installed, try it out with this blog post!)

How to listen fast

The faster you can listen, the faster you will complete books. You should practice listening to higher speeds (unless a very complicated book). Gradually, you will be able to listen at 3.5x speed.

Remember that every word that the narrator says is not valuable. Zoom out to get the big idea and move on.

How to take notes from audiobooks/podcasts

There is no convenient solution yet for highlighting and exporting interesting parts of audiobooks. As of now, I use two different methods:

• Manually write down in my note-taking app. By writing the title, you can later search for it when you need to.

• Bookmark. In many audio players, you can save a certain timestamp to listen to later. I do it primarily when I need to fully articulate what has been said for book summaries.

If you do these two, you will retain as much as you need.