4 ms·

Interesting comments on here and a lot resinate with me. As humans we need to consume information to progress. Is it bad that we are "listening" rather than "r

Interesting comments on here and a lot resinate with me. As humans we need to consume information to progress. Is it bad that we are "listening" rather than "reading"? We are still learning... I can't spend much more than 10 minutes reading but I can run an hour and listen to an audiobook.

piva00 6y ago
In my personal experience I noticed that it's a different experience reading a book or listening to it. Not sure if it's because of where my attention is focused on, and it's not even like I don't absorb the content while listening and running or biking. At the same time it feels like it's a different part of my brain absorbing it. I've given a few chances to audiobooks, from short to longer ones, I don't feel it replaces the experience of reading at all, it's a different experience, like listening to a radio show but as it never happens to listen to an audiobook while doing nothing else it just feels another way to cram more "productive" activities on the same time slot. As I'm getting older I'm getting really tired of this hyper-efficiency with my time, it's became a worry and definitely is fueling an anxiety syndrome I didn't have before (of course, the pandemic has just made it much worse). What I'm trying to achieve in life now is give myself more pace, to enjoy something I'm doing because I want and not trying to min-max my free time. So reading books now have their time slot during the week where I stop 1-2 hours just to read. The same for music listening or making music, I have no idea yet if it will help me but it's definitely much less stressful. Sorry for the rant, totally personal anecdote but I think it ties to the reading vs listening differences.
cgh 6y ago
Since when is reading solely about learning and progress? Where is there room for fiction in this information-consumption view of the literary world?

piva00 6y ago

In my personal experience I noticed that it's a different experience reading a book or listening to it. Not sure if it's because of where my attention is focused on, and it's not even like I don't absorb the content while listening and running or biking. At the same time it feels like it's a different part of my brain absorbing it. I've given a few chances to audiobooks, from short to longer ones, I don't feel it replaces the experience of reading at all, it's a different experience, like listening to a radio show but as it never happens to listen to an audiobook while doing nothing else it just feels another way to cram more "productive" activities on the same time slot. As I'm getting older I'm getting really tired of this hyper-efficiency with my time, it's became a worry and definitely is fueling an anxiety syndrome I didn't have before (of course, the pandemic has just made it much worse). What I'm trying to achieve in life now is give myself more pace, to enjoy something I'm doing because I want and not trying to min-max my free time. So reading books now have their time slot during the week where I stop 1-2 hours just to read. The same for music listening or making music, I have no idea yet if it will help me but it's definitely much less stressful. Sorry for the rant, totally personal anecdote but I think it ties to the reading vs listening differences.

cgh 6y ago

Since when is reading solely about learning and progress? Where is there room for fiction in this information-consumption view of the literary world?