1.I've never consumed audiobooks or podcasts. I find them unnatural. Most audiobooks put me to sleep and most podcasts aren't worth 45-90 minutes. You can get the same value out of reading a 10-minute article. It's a problem of engagement. Though recently I found a way around it.
2.The difference between audio and reading is constant engagement. There's more of it in reading for me. The biggest problem I face with audio is spacing out. It happens more while reading or listening to non-fiction. The quick and easy workaround is -
3.If you are reading a book or listening to an audiobook that's making you space out too much, just get a pdf, mobi or epub of it. Upload it on any ebook reader on your phone and start the 'text to speech' engine.
4.The great thing about it is that T2S engines are inaccurate. They mispronounce words, pronounce the page numbers between sentence breaks, have weird intonation and much more. A certain level of inaccuracy keeps you engaged when the same text would have spaced you out otherwise
Plus, you can increase the speech rate and pitch to maximise consumption speed and weirdness to maximize engagement.
@threadreaderapp unroll please
