Almost everyone agrees that reading is one of the most important habits to develop. True. However, for a busy professional or a young college student, there isn’t time during the busy day to dedicate to sitting down and reading.
But, technology today makes it easier than ever before. We have audiobooks. It is about creating a book reading habit – or listening in our case. This is what has worked for me.
- find out if the book I am about to read is worth my time:
- this is a big commitment, so I am careful picking my books. I start by watching a summary video on YouTube for the book, this is generally available
- download the mp3 (or similar) format of the audio-book
- save it on my phone
- use an audio-book app: I use “Smart AudioBook Player” for Android, you can use what ever you prefer
Most important is to keep track of what you listen to. I use a spreadsheet for this.
Most-most important is to make some sort of summary notes on the book. I do this on my phone again and save it to the cloud. In general, there are 2-5 really important points the author wants to say. The rest is “fluff”. Making a half-page or less summary of the book helps distill the information down. This comes super handy when in future you want to go back and re-visit the book. You can easily review your own notes.
There isn’t a “best time” for this. I listen throughout the day when I am doing stupid tasks like cooking, cleaning, working out, doing my business in toilet, etc. Commutes are also a great time to listen.
It is about creating a habit of audio-books. This habit pays huge dividends over time and you will start to reap the benefits, guaranteed.