This past year I’ve been working on listening to audiobooks. I absolutely love the idea of them. As someone who loves reading and appreciating all kinds of writing, but never seems to have enough time to sit down and read for pleasure, audiobooks seemed like the perfect solution. I was able to “read” more books, and do so all while driving, doing dishes, folding laundry, walking around campus, or any other activity that is essential but generally boring.
I have always retained more information visually, so it wasn’t easy at first. If you’re anything like me your brain will do anything possible to not focus on the story being told. I almost gave up a few times, but still, I persisted, determined to work on getting through my never-ending list of “Want to Read” books. Not only did it become easier to keep my attention on the books I listen to, but my focus all around became better.
I found that practicing keeping my mental focus on one thing helped to organize my mental processes even when I wasn’t listening to audiobooks. Especially with online learning, I have found my attentiveness to be even worse than usual, always having a million tabs open, both figuratively and literally. Despite the irony of multitasking while listening to books while doing aimless tasks, training my mind to concentrate on one book at a time translated to helping my attention remain on one thing at a time in other arenas of my life; homework, job, hobbies, relationships etc. While I wouldn’t say that listening to audiobooks was solely responsible for my focus improvement, I would definitely argue that it helped me kill two birds with one stone. I highly recommend audiobooks to anyone who has been wanting to read more but couldn’t seem to find the time, and even those of who think they’d never be able to focus on an audiobook.