1.5x to 2x Speed

After listening to a Ali Abdaal podcast with Cliff Weitzman, the founder of Speechify, I was inspired to try to train the superpower of listening.

In their chat, Cliff discusses his origin story, the founding of Speechify and the personal motivation for its creation as a means for him to access the world. Essentially, the man, as someone with dyslexia, created and built a text-to-speech app to survive and thrive in school and life. From reading textbooks aloud to reading internet pages aloud, to listening to podcasts while traveling and everythign in-between, Cliff is an example of its uses. He advocates for the superpowers of listening and the evolutionary hardwiring for listening over visual decoding and processing.

I’ve attached the podcast link below in case you are interested in listening yourself but here’s my take-aways.

TAKE-AWAYS

The big take-away for me is the idea of training your listening.

This honing of his listening and knowledge consumption allowed him to design a life whereby he can navigate his life with his ears always listening - at 3x to 5x speed.

It’s a skill he developed over time though. Not something he was naturally good at or born with or anything.

And for whatever reason, that was a sort of epiphany moment for me.

I always just categorized it and compartmentalized it in my head as an ability you either had or didn’t.

That some people could just do it and they were lucky or gifted.

I mean we all listen intuitively and naturally but I’ve never considered it a skill to enhance, develop or refine.

For me, I can do 1.5x to 2x speed and be fine-ish but it’s not like I hear every single word or could recall things all the time. It’s not like that was my preferred speed but solely for ease of consumption, I would do it.

But those words encouraged me. To try. To practice. To practice listening at a faster rate.

And so, I’ve been listening to podcasts, professional education videos, and YouTube talking head videos at 1.5x to 2x speed.

My point being that productivity continues to be an expression of self-experimentation.

There isn’t some big profound secret but more a stepwise trial and error period of what works for you as an individual.

What are the small things that make you show up a little more excited each day.

What are the small things that start your day off right, that provide you with a little more structure earlier.

What are the things that you prioritize, design around, and consider to create the lifestyle that you want.

To me, listening to things at 1.5x to 2x speed means more consumption of content while I drive. Things to ponder, to actively engage, to stimulate me while I drive on the road to and from work. That means an extra hour of stimulation. An extra hour of learning or thought-provoking material.

Which may not seem like much. But an hour every work day means 20 more hours a month. 20 more hours a month means 240 more hours a year. 240 more hours a year can allow me to learn new facts, learn new interests, learn more about myself, develop my thinking or introspect.

Now add onto that, that in that 1 hour per day time frame I am actually consuming 2 hours worth of content.

Now 240 hours a year actually means 480 hours of content consumption.

Whether it’s for pleasure, for professional development, for personal development or whatever else, the possibilities grow.

And for this post, I wanted to encapsulate that concept.

That I continue to put out content, to try and push boundaries, to explore what I individually find helpful or see as productive, and maybe that would resonate with you.

It may not always resonate and that’s okay. Again, it’s a self-experimentation process.

But to go onto the record about my own productivity journey, to write what I am currently considering and exploring, and maybe that will inspire or motivate you to do the same for yourself.