In other words, allow creative thoughts about the things the lecturer is saying to form – wander around in idea-space a bit – and think about them, while simultaneously keeping up with the thread of the speech. You'll gain a lot more from your time in the lecture hall, and it'll also be a lot more fun. A lecture shouldn't just be (and doesn't have to be) dry information stuffing.
With video tutorials I have the same problem. On normal speed I will work ahead, take a wrong turn because I didn't know where the lecture would go or drift off in to something slightly creative and than notice that I missed a section where finally something new was explained. So I have to skip back and find where I started missing something (Something really really annoying with audio material; No thumbnails, no search, no skimming backwards, mostly no identification possible from a single frame or word (the easiest way to find a part again, to which I listened before, is to remember where on my journey I was when I listened to that part and where that was in relation to where I heard what is currently playing)).
Books are an intrinsically better format for this since the amount of time required to 'process' the new information will vary a lot from person to person, and you get complete control with books. I can't see any benefit to the lecture format aside from mass consumption—aside from question-asking, which I do think is vital, but it is typically under-used. Books + lots of questions to an expert seems ideal.
[1] http://nautil.us/issue/52/the-hive/modern-media-is-a-dos-att...
Another analogy might be trying to ride a bike too slowly. It's very difficult not to wobble extremely and fall off. It takes more effort to ride slowly. My mind can't wander with slow speech because it takes great effort and attention to maintain ideas in active memory long enough to make it through sentences. I am better able to have branching thoughts while keeping up with the thread of speech when the speech is faster.
I frequently drive with audiobooks on and it is usually not possible for me to follow along without a speed boost of at least about 25% or so.
No kidding. Overcast has a "Smartspeed" feature that cuts out these pauses. The counter on my app says it's saved me 195 hours to date.
"Smart Speed has saved you an extre __ hours beyond speed adjustments alone."
(Just went through this exercise to find it last week)
Also, holy shit, this has saved me 255 hours, not counting speedups. That's crazy.
And with that experience, what are your favorite podcasts?
I may get downvoted as just an old man yelling at clouds, but I wish that people would actually take more time to enjoy silence in its own right.
My own kids seem to like doing everything with a pair of headphones on, or a video playing on their devices constantly, but some of my own moments of pure bliss have been sitting in my garden, sans technology, with a book or just petting my cat and stopping to breathe, listen to the sounds of nature and think about ideas.
I am in my 20s now but I do agree with you. I enjoy just being with silence around me, especially when reading.
As a consequence, I really appreciate the quiet moments and nature walks etc.
It's pretty hard to enjoy silence in two second chunks.
Someone might use smartspeed to save half an hour, and then use that time to enjoy nature uninterrupted.
I'm not going to downvote you, but you basically are yelling at clouds. The two kinds of 'silence' are completely unrelated.
Even two seconds of silent time is useful to ponder and reflect. When I am not in 'flow' state while working, I will often just look away from the screen to pat my cat or pick up my guitar for a few seconds to noodle unplugged. I find that helps me to step down from frenetic brain activity and let my subconscious stew on things.
To equate it to a musical analogy - sometimes it is the space between the notes. As much as I respect the technical ability of guitarists that can cram 3000 notes per minute in a long shred solo, I cannot listen to that for more than 30 seconds before my brain is screaming for some relief. I would much rather listen to a blues guitarist or saxophonist play a few notes with enough pauses between phrases to fully appreciate them and wait for the next one with anticipation.
Some silence just is not enriching. I would rather spend an hour in a forest than waiting at the DMV. I would rather enjoy a cup of coffee than wait 10 minutes for a colleague to arrive on time to a meeting.
There are some things that are worth experiencing in their fullest, and there are some things that are only worth experiencing by skimming through.
Like some books are worth deep study, reading, rereading, analyzing, digging, and getting every ounce of value from them. Others give all they have in a rush.
You think you saved 195 hours, but in reality you saved far less hours (I'm not saying you didn't save any hours).
Silences serve to aid your brain from getting tired, allowing you to catch up and process the information, or to get in diffused mode of thinking.
If silences were completely useless they wouldn't ever be used. You'd download an audiobook from the official vendor, and it wouldn't contain any silences.
I find that when I’m watching/listening something as long as there are no pauses, I don’t need the 2x speed. Particularly because I find speech often difficult to follow at anything more than 1.3x while at 1.3x the pauses are still way too long.
Smartspeed feature has been a godsend.
This is also a something that NPR has been doing on shows for years - perhaps not 'all' but they certainly do a lot of cleanup.
They also have some training material online, which may be of use to many people doing editing: http://training.npr.org/audio/the-ear-training-guide-for-aud...
The transcript of Pulling Back the Curtain may also be of interest, I think it may have been rebroadcast at some point as well so audio may get turn up.
Edit: http://www.wnyc.org/story/129697-pulling-back-the-curtain/
I certainly don't notice it easily but I have saved several hundred hours according to it.
Listen to folks using screen readers reading off menus and navigation and such. Those users adapt to stuff going much much faster than 2x!
[0] https://webaim.org/techniques/screenreader/ [1] https://www.vincit.fi/en/blog/software-development-450-words...
But then I would shift back to 4,000 wpm and suddenly it seemed so easy to keep pace. And the longer you stayed at 10,000 wpm the easier 4,000 became.
I feel our brains are totally up the challenge.
I'm not sure I'd retain much from a technical conversation at 3x -- for me the drop seems to be somewhere between 2x and 3x.
It's one thing to listen to a very consistent voice repeating very much familiar material. Another to have novel or complex material thrown at you.
My listening speeds range from 1x to 2x, for the most part. If I'm focused on material, 1.5x is almost always listenable. If I'm highly focused, or the speaker is slow and boring, 2x+. If the material is difficult or the speaker exceedingly good, intelligent, and the material well-prepared, 1x - 1.25x works quite well.
At some point you'll start to hear what birds and other fast talking animals are saying. I'm not joking. I mean you'll still probably wouldn't understand them.
Most lectures at 1x border on unwatchable except for the very best presenters (and then you wonder how much you're learning as opposed to being WOWed.
But I mostly listen to podcasts for entertainment reasons (i.e. people I wanna listen to about topics that interest me) so my desire to speed through is not so high.
Reviewing data structures? 2x
Ad retargeting in marketing course? 1.5x what wait 1x
And then its back to 2x, I concentrate at listening better
For lectures, I tend to speedwatch with stops, replays and skips. In some cases, I am 100% convinced that like you, I'd have never been able to stay tuned. The whole thing has a tendency towards escalation, and the result comes with its own troubles.
it really feels good to pump interesting thoughts in at the speed limit of perception and recognition :)