First, let's start with some basic math because it's a nice and objective way to chime in.
So, let's say you spend one hour every weekday to commute from home to work, that's two hours per day. Let's also say that you do solitary exercise like jogging or gym for one hour every other day than Sunday, that's six hours per week.
Because there is 5 weekdays in a week and 52 weeks in a year there is 5 * 52 = 260 weekdays in a year. That means you spend 2h * 260, that is 520 hours per year on commuting alone.
In addition, you spend 6h * 52 = 312 hours on doing solitary exercise. In total that is 520h + 312h = 832 hours per year, which is 832h / 8h = 104 full working days.
Of course in these calculations we don't take into account vacations and those sort of things and we also hypothesise that you can follow the exercise discipline like a machine. Still, this at least gives you a nice ballpark estimation on how much time that is altogether, so please bear with me.
In a normal European university that complies with the ECTS-credits standard a school semester equates to about 1500 - 1800 hours of studying, that's 1650 hours on average.
So, finally 832h / 1650h equals roughly 50%.
What does that mean?
Now, what if you were to use all that time to your advantage in such a way that you were actually doing something equivalent to studying whilst enjoying the whole process? Would it then mean that during one full year, you would potentially get an extra half school semester's worth of knowledge assimilated and at your disposal in very pleasant way?
Even if that is not the case, should that amount of time just be neglected and untapped?
I'm of the belief that that is not the case.
Podcasts
In the beginning of last semester (2008 - 2009) I was talking with a course lecturer about the benefits of podcasts. I mentioned to him that I listen to this one particular podcast called Software Engineering Radio whilst commuting to school. After explaining what the podcast was about the lecturer got instantly curious and commented that he'll definitely take a look at that.
A week later he mentioned having listened to one episode whilst jogging and that he really liked it. He said it was really nice to be able to use the jogging time more effectively and that it also helped him keep his heart rate from getting too high during the jog.
That is one of the rare cases where I've met a person who listens to podcasts regularly and even there it was only the beginning for that particular lecturer. Personally I know only two other people who do that and I don't really know the reason for that.
It makes so much sense to me to listen to these things. I get to kick back and just immerse myself in a topic by having some experts analyse and chat about it. Occasionally I take notes of interesting tidbits or websites I should check out. Sometimes I stop the playback completely and let my mind work at some new idea that occurred to me whilst listening and then I write that down in my notebook or cell phone for future reference.
All in all I have to say that I enjoy listening to podcast quite a bit.
Nutrition For Your Mind
I think about listening to podcasts the same way I think about reading useful books. It is simply awesome to start your day by tuning in on an intellectual conversation about some topic that you're interested in. It can be like catching up on news in a way that is very pleasant as you don't have to do much but just listen.
There can be some podcasts which you cannot really listen to easily eg. whilst commuting. I found that some se-radio episodes are so tightly packed with knowledge that listening to them demands a level of concentration that I just can't attain whilst travelling. What happens is that I valiantly try to keep up with the conversation by pausing, rewinding, and even taking notes but still to no avail as I slowly but surely am left guessing at what the people in the podcast are talking about.
One of such episodes that comes to mind dealt about service oriented architecture. I tried to listen to that episode actually 3 times whilst commuting and it always had the same result sooner or later. I believe it was the result of the topic being too abstract to me and of one of the hosts way of presenting information in a very straightforward German fashion with almost no fill up words or sentences where one could relax even for a second or two.
Listening to those heavy hitters require you to just sit down and listen to apprehensively in a place where you can concentrate only on studying.
Rob Walling of Micropreneur Academy suggests in one of his learning modules that you should be taking notes when you listen to podcasts and audio books or when you read books, magazines and blogs. This way you start eliminating resources that don't generate actionable items and that results in you filtering out unimportant chaff. So in his philosophy, non-actionable resources equal unimportant.
A Look Into the Future
Now that was about podcasts. Naturally you can also choose to listen to an educative audio book every once in a while. You might just as well take up on studying something that is directly beneficial to your main studies at school or at work.
I believe this learning through podcasts and/or educative audio books is still very much a growing phenomenon and not yet a mainstream thing. I don't think it is mainstream because eg. in my social group I'm among the very few who actually do listen to these things.
I foresee podcasts becoming a general way of acquiring any type of knowledge and different school systems adopting them as a new way for the students to "attend" lectures. This opens up a new channel for the students to get to the course material and as such it's only a positive thing. Some universities are doing this already.
Another possibility for universities is the outsourcing of lectures. Now that the economy is down and costs have to be cut, how about contracting an expert in some field to lecture a course he or she is a top scholar in? That could be possible by simply using the Academic Earth video lectures as the course lectures themselves. It could lower the costs for the university as the person organizing the course could be supervising many more courses than the currently.
To finish off, here's a couple of simple things to keep in mind when listening to podcasts:
- Pause the playback for a while if you think you need time to process something that was said. It is always good to let your mind work out the details instead of just listening passively.
- Rewind the podcast back if you missed something that was said. If you don't do this you might find yourself falling out from continuous stream of thought that listening to a podcast creates for you and that is a bad thing.
- Take notes when you hear something of value. It is all too easy to forget what you heard if you don't make an effort to remember it. What I do is just write down a couple of words in my cell phone as a txt message and then save it as a draft.
The podcasts I currently listen to regularly are (in no particular order):
I'll write a blog post later where I review each one of those and give comments on what I believe I've gotten from and why I listen to them.
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