Ravikant encourages reading as the fastest way to ingest information. He is correct, but I find it easier to consume long-form information through my ear.
Live, this worked great for paying attention to lectures and talks. I got a lot out of going to conferences in the last part of the previous decade. I ask many questions in conversation because I ingest the information from people I talk with quickly and easily - and I remember that information later. But absent the immersive quality of one-on-one or a conference room, I had a hard time absorbing information from podcasts or audiobooks.
In previous years, goaded by tech-bros bragging about how many podcasts they put away, I tried listening at 2x speed. The 2x experience made me feel unwell at the time. I would listen at the standard “1x” rate. Given my time constraints, I limited myself to a little bit of audio entertainment in the form of trashy politics and some high-quality storytelling.
During the pandemic, I discovered that I now could listen to audio content at 2x. Our gym had re-opened with social distancing and mask rules in place. As I re-started my cross-trainer routine, I experimented with an audio program made for the format - a mix of lectures and passages from Stephen R Covey to explain his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for a listening audience. I started at standard speed. But, a little bored with the early program, I tried speeding it up. It worked, and I plateaued at 2x.
After this series, I started experimenting with listening to audiobooks. Various local libraries had free apps for borrowing books to make this easy: I used Libby and Hoopla.
Listening to these audio programs while exercising was successful because my mind would relax a bit. I could focus on the words entering my ear. I limited myself to great books I had meant to read for years. Now I was consuming my wish list!
When we moved to Vermont for the winter, I snowboarded every day. I did so with knowledge pouring into me. I would turn on a book walking out the door. I rode for two or three hours - four to six hours of narration. The average audiobook is (in my experience) around 8 hours, so this meant more than half a book consumed every time I was out. My retention from those books exceeded those at the gym. I can’t be sure of the mechanic, just the outcome. I suspect that by giving my eyes something essential to do - keeping me from epic falls - my brain could better absorb the data from the books.
Now I am away from the mountain, and my retention at the gym is good but not great. I am listening for maybe 90 minutes per day. I am absorbing less quantity. My attention is not as good as it was on the mountain, so I get less quality per book.
I plan to focus on reading better books. The intent is to focus on domains that are hard for me today but important for me tomorrow. But I am not afraid of these local lows in information ingest. The important part is maintaining consistency in the habit so that it can ebb or flow but not stop. I learned that from a book I heard once.