Don’t hoot I’m studying!

One of the “luxuries” of living in the country is the drive that I regularly get to do on route to Cape Town. Rather than curse at the 1.5hrs it takes to complete the journey, I have managed to turn it into quality “me” time.  So apart from the occasional singing at the top of my voice, what, you may ask, do I do to fill the time. My answer is audiobooks.  For a few days a week I get to spend a 3-5 hours learning stuff. What a fantastic opportunity to keep the gray stuff in my head from shrinking. So what do audiobooks hold in store? Well, anything and everything really. From novels to non-fiction, business to birding, languages to love, it’s all there for the taking, at a price of course. 

How do you go about it? There are numerous ways to download material. My favorite is a site called www.audible.com . You become a member, take out one of their package offers and away you go. However, you might be happier with Amazon, eMusic or iTunes (some good free stuff here). They all have audiobooks on offer.

The device that you listen to the book on does make a difference to the experience. The iPod or iPhone is a great device to use as it will hold your place for you when you turn it off, and it gives you the ability to take it out of the car and continue anywhere else. The best feature for me though is the ability to learn at double speed.

Did you know that our brain can absorb information far quicker than we can speak. This is the reason that we sometimes get bored during conversations…(*yawn).  Our mind is way ahead of the topic. The clever people at Apple have taken care of this by giving you the option to listen at double speed. It takes a while for you to get used to it, but after about 5 minutes it sounds no different. Normal conversation seems soooo slow.

So if you spend a couple hours in the traffic everyday, why not turn this time into productive learning time. Traffic jams become a thing of the past. You hardly notice them when you are engrossed in a chapter of a good book. My advice, get off the slow road to gray matter deterioration and onto the super fast learning highway, you won’t look back. So go ahead and do it today. Create your life.