For a while now, I have been wanting to conduct a little experiment for myself. I am a person who needs to listen to music while commuting. I get bored and sometimes I get anxious if I do not listen to music while I do certain things. However, podcasts have been very intriguing for me and I wanted to try them out and see how I like them. So, for a full week, I decided to replace my music with podcasts to see how I would like it.
I started with podcasts from people I knew from certain YouTube channels and other social media platforms. I thought that I might be more interested in their podcasts since I already their content on other platforms. It was interesting to listen to them talk about their actual lives instead of watching random scripted videos. This different perspective on these people and hearing them talk about actual real-life things was really intriguing and made me realize that podcasts were fun and relatable.
After the first day of podcasts, I started searching for different types of podcasts hosted by people I had never heard before. I found quite a few that sounded interesting. For example, they have podcasts about leisure, which is my field of study, and crime shows which I enjoy. There are also a lot of podcasts about lifestyle, special events across the world and many other interesting subjects. My library got so big I didn’t know what to start with.
I also noticed that my productivity increased quite a bit. I am not quite sure if there is a specific reason, but I got a boost of motivation from a few of these podcasts. Even though the music does help me with my concentration, it can also be very distracting. But I never realized it until now. I think that podcasts, depending on what you listen to, can help with productivity. I also learned a lot from some of the podcasts. For example, I got a few tips on how to avoid procrastination which has helped with my schoolwork, especially going to finals season. I don’t know if it can work for everyone, but it worked for me.
The last thing that I realized during this week was that I never felt like I was wasting time. Sometimes when I commute to school or work or anywhere really, I feel like I’m wasting time that I could use to do something a lot more important. However, listening to these podcasts is, in their ways, very educational. Depending on what you listen to, it can be very helpful and give you some good knowledge about things that happen in the world that you might not be aware of or they can teach you to do certain things to make you have a better day. I felt like instead of listening to the same songs over and over again like I always do, I was using this time to expand my knowledge on a bunch of different subjects and wasn’t even aware of it until the last few days of this experiment, and was probably my favourite outcome of this whole week.
This experiment was something that I wanted to try out for a long time but never really had the patience or motivation to go through the podcast app and pick out some episodes. But once I got into it, I realized how fun and fulfilling podcasts can be. I feel a lot more productive with my time and I learned a lot through the many podcasts I listened to during the week. I recommend trying it out.