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Comment by dcolkitt | Hacker News Reader

When it comes to long, difficult slogs, I prefer audiobooks. Mostly consumed when exercising outside in nature.

Imagine reading Moby Dick, and the author goes into a long boring diatribe about 19th century cetology. If you're sitting at home reading a physical book, pushing through is a long, difficult process that requires continuous effortful willpower. But when you're running a 10km, at worst you just zone out util the chapter's done. It's not like you have anything else to do. Sure, it's not optimal in terms of reading retention, but it's better than giving up completely because you can't force yourself to turn the pages.

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As somebody with ADHD, I can't consume audiobooks at all. My mind just starts to wander 10 seconds in and eventually I realize I haven't been listening for the past half-hour. It's the same with talks or lectures on YouTube, though I've found that putting them at 2x speed helps to keep my attention.

I really do need a book in text form, because it allows me full control over how quickly or in what order I consume it. I learned a long time ago that reading books linearly doesn't work for me, so reading as I do involves a thorough look at the table of contents, then a lot of skimming and jumping back and forth to find the most interesting/stimulating bits and assembling that into a coherent view of the book.

Yeah same here. I only tried audio books once or twice, it just didn't do it for me. I need the physical images of the words in front of me in order to keep them in my head. I've also found physical books to be much more forgiving of micro-distractions. When some sound from across the house distracts me, all I need to do to "pause" the reading is... stop reading. My eyes can wander around the page briefly and I don't lose anything. But with audio, I am finding myself manually needing to pause, rewind, etc.

I also listen to lectures and so on at higher speeds! People I know think I'm crazy when they walk in and hear someone yammering about some dev topic in a chipmunk's voice, but I just get so impatient with slower speech.

I consume a lot of audiobooks - but I can really only listen to them in certain contexts when I am doing something else that requires a certain level of concentration: driving, gardening, cooking, cleaning and most of all walking. If I try and listen to them without doing something else I just fall asleep and I can't listen to them when doing something that requires a lot of concentration either.

I now have a lot of unused Audible credits because of the recent lockdown here which is lifting on Friday!

That's how I am. I mowed for a job two years ago, and that was the perfect activity to listen to an audiobook for me. It keeps me physically busy, but requires no thought. I can autopilot all day while listening.

I always describe multitasking this way as needing two different stimuli. I need something to engage my brain, and something to engage my body. I went though a phase of learning a Rubik's Cube while watching movies. That helped me focus greatly while it lasted.

I try to slot everything I can into one of those two categories. Things that take little thought, and things that require little physical action. Then I can mix and match them.

I can only consume audiobooks if I'm doing something else. It seems I have to push my brain to the edge of activity it can absorb at once. Too little activity (just listening to an audiobook) and I get bored and distracted. Too much activity (listening while coding) and I don't do either well. Listening while doing mindless tasks like cleaning or exercising seem to be just the right amount of mental activity to keep me engaged well.

Same, with regard to audiobooks. The only thing I find them useful for is helping me get to sleep.

Excuse me but Melville's asides are anything but boring!

Moby Dick was one of the first "real" books I touched as child. I got it from the school library over the summer vacations. I have to admit that I too found the asides boring and only managed to get about halfway through until the end of the vacations. At the beginning of the new school year I had to return it but had the intent to borrow it again to finish it. I never did and this must be the longest open point on my personal to do list. I wonder if - after so much time has passed - I still would find the asides boring...

Yeah, I was amazed by good moby dick was. It's rare that a famous book so fully lives up to the expectations that society has set for it.

if those asides are in The Confidence Man, in Moby Dick they bore.

This seems like better advice. For fiction, or even some non-fiction texts like philosophical treatises, I find I can amble through an audiobook by putting it on while I fall asleep, and then back-tracking a little each night.

The advice in the article pertains specifically to non-fiction, didactic literature, and hints that most books of this nature really are full of fluff. For those there's a few take-aways that you could have gotten from a concise article, instead of getting stuck in someone's ramblings.

> the author goes into a long boring diatribe about 19th century cetology. If you're sitting at home reading a physical book //

Don't you just scan ahead and jump to the next bit? I have a problem with doing this with novels I like, if it's getting intense then I'll want to skip/scan-read to get to the next tranche of "action". I do the same with TV/films, if there's a filler scene, just skip to the next scene.

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