Mindful podcast listening

Poorly Drawn Lines: Podcasts

I have been listening to podcast for a long time. I have blogged about this previously. 

During that time, I have changed devices and players. I might have started with a classic iPod, then went to a Symbian phone, now on Android, first with BeyondPod and currently Pocket Casts. 

The one constant was the increasing number of podcasts and episodes I had to deal with every week. I do love the variety and coming across weird episodes on "In Our Time", where I learn about topics I would never have known about. 

This all takes time, and at some point more time than I actually have. My backlog sometimes went above a hundred episodes and multiple days in playtime.

So I did, what probably most people do: increase the listening speed, skip silences, and similar tools. Pocket Casts even has a helpful page to show you how much you "saved". 

But recently, I started wondering about what I lost. Can I really ingest all this information at higher speeds? Aren't silences in between human and part of the story?

I decided to follow the advice I give everybody who has too many things to do and not enough time to do them: prioritize and reduce the scope. 

I removed many podcasts I previously subscribed to. First, I deleted the ones with overlapping topics. For example, I do listen to a lot of cycling podcasts, a few of them do cover more or less the same topics.

Furthermore, I also went back to 1x speed and without trimming silences. 

I am still skipping and auto-skipping ads. If I notice that I skip over content, I just skip the whole episode. And once I skip a few episodes of the same podcast, I unsubscribe. 

This entire exercise really helped to make the listening experience much more enjoyable. I really like listening to them at their normal speed and natural flow of pauses and silences.  

And I got rid of my backlog. I now listen to most episodes in the same week they were published. I also have time for many other things, like reading, listening to music, or just being more mindful about the things that I am actually doing and like the comic about says: just being with my thoughts.  

Making room for new favourites

That being said, I also have discovered some new podcasts over the last year that I now also have the time to listen to. 

Strangers on a Bench - Tom chats to random people sitting on benches in London. It is a very relaxing listen that reminds me of my time in London and all the interesting people. 

Tea and Sanctuary - Emma talks about random things, very cosy and calm in our weird times.

The Louis Theroux Podcast - Fun interviews, this is one of the podcasts where I only listen to the guests which interest me. I especially liked the ones with Sean Evans and Jamie Oliver.

Bookoverflow - Tech book reviews every week. The only problem is that this also adds to my very long book backlog.