Cover Photo by Bud Helisson on Unsplash (adapted)
Double your learning speed, and more!
“Put your headphones on or listen to this like a normal person.”, my wife said to me last night.
“Headphones it is!”, I replied.
When it comes to learning, why would I aim for normal? Isn’t it smart to want to learn faster and better than others? After all, the more you learn, the better equipped you are to succeed at many things you do.
A while ago, I picked up this habit that made it so the world around me feels “slow”. Mind you, I’m far from a genius. This habit I’m talking about, you can pick it up too. It really is a skill. Here it is:
Put any audio at 2x speed
That’s it?
Yup!
Stick around and you’ll understand why it works and how you can learn to master this important skill.
You may have tried with podcasts or Youtube videos before and gave up right away. It feels so unnatural and it’s hard to follow (at first). And as a non-native English speaker myself, a lot of the content out there felt impossible to follow at 2x speed.
Now that I’ve been doing that for over a year, here are the tangible results:
I can follow most podcasts at 2x+ speed;
I can follow videos at 2x+ speed;
I still retain as much as if I was listening at 1x speed, potentially more since I can take more notes during the same amount of time;
My brain processes information much faster during lectures or dialogues;
I improvise a lot better; and
I have more energy.
Let’s explore the last four results in greater detail:
1. You will retain information better
When you become really good at this skill, you don’t realize that you’re listening at 2x speed anymore. It sounds normal to you. When listening at “normal” speed, it feels like it’s going at sloth-speed.
When you try 2x for the first time, it makes you laugh. Voices seem distorted. The same happens when you listen at 0.5x. But imagine now that your normal is 2x. 1x is the new 0.5x. I find it hilariously slow!
So, when 2x is your new normal and it doesn’t sound distorted to you anymore, that’s when you are essentially able to double the information fed into your brain and retain just as much.
2. You will process information faster
When you’re trying to learn a language through audio, do you sometimes catch yourself slowing the audio down to understand better?
And it works, right?
Now imagine your normal is 2x speed and you go to a live lecture. Surely you can’t speed up how quickly the speaker talks (not that I know of at least)! So, to you, the speaker is essentially speaking slower than what you’re used to.
Just as slowing down audio to process information more easily, the same is happening here. The connections your brain makes when listening are now made faster. I sadly don’t have scientific proof of that yet, but I’ve certainly experienced it.
3. You will improvise better
I used to not like live conversations. I used to have to take a moment to reflect before I would say anything that I’d consider “smart”. If you asked me to improvise “interview” questions like I am now with SkillUp Academy, there’s no way I would have been able to do it and still say something “intelligent” enough.
I was scared of going to meetups. I was scared of having conversations with strangers. I was afraid of not thinking of the right thing to say in a group conversation, or even one-on-one.
Now, partly because I process information faster, it’s easier for me to jump into a conversation and “succeed” at finding relevant things to say at a fast enough rate.
People who know me today could never guess this was ever an issue for me before.
4. You will “have” more energy
That one I never expected but it makes sense in hindsight. As humans, we mimic what we hear and see. If what you hear is fast, what you’ll say will be faster. People will perceive this as higher energy.
Think of Gary Vaynerchuk for example. He’s a great example of someone who speaks fast and seems like he’s got intense energy. He probably does. I’ve noticed as well how much more energy I have since then. But it’s not just me, the people I meet comment on how contagious my energy level is.
How to train for this skill
I apologize if to this point if I’ve led you to believe that it’s easy to learn this skill, because it really isn’t. Here are some strategies to make it easier for you:
1. Start gradually
I actually started at 1.5x speed. You certainly can start there. Once it sounds natural to you, increase to 1.75x or 2x. That took me about 1 week of listening to content for about 1 hour daily. But we’re all different here.
2. Start with content you’re already familiar with
Re-watch a podcast episode or an audiobook you’ve already listened to at 1x speed, but this time at 2x speed. You can do the same with a video.
3. Put subtitles on videos
This is a very important hack. You can usually follow up faster by reading. Combine both and you’ll accelerate your learning and retention.
4. Take breaks
It causes you headaches? It’s totally okay to take a break. Plus, at first, it will likely hinder your retention if you don’t pause and reflect. Never be afraid to pause for a bit.
5. Push through
Don’t go back to 1x, no matter what happens. It’s like eating a Big Mac after doing a workout. It’s better to take breaks. Don’t give up. For it to become natural, it will have to have become a habit. That takes at least one month of consistent practice.
Problems with that habit
I briefly touched on that above. It’s a great habit I wouldn’t change, but it doesn’t come without downsides. I want to paint a realistic picture here.
1. It annoys other people greatly
Remember my wife’s request from above? It wasn’t asked that calmly. And I can’t blame her. There’s something about sound going faster than it should that really triggers something in our brains. It’s really bugging us.
Can you listen to music at 2x speed? It nearly makes you aggressive haha. It’s not that different with speech. So now, whenever I want to listen to things around people, I have to put headphones on.
Not that big a deal, but still annoying.
2. You will enjoy voice messages and slow talkers a lot less
You know why it takes me longer to reply to your voice messages? Because you talk too slow for me! Plus, I gotta pause my music and that doesn’t make me happy haha!
But seriously, it’s a curse in this world where everyone wants to save their own time by sending you voice notes. I’d certainly read your text message faster than I’d listen to it, plus I’d get to keep my music on!
A win-win here is to get people to leave you transcribed messages, but that’s assuming the other person has a perfectly clean accent and the software doesn’t mess up.
Another curse is that slow conversations will now bore you to death. Pick up the pace guys! In a world where 99.9%* of the population function at 1x audio speed, you are certainly the odd one and you’ll be expected to slow down yourself.
*totally made that statistic up…
3. Movies and TV shows will put you to sleep
Unless you put them at 2x speed, but that’s one heck of an achievement. Audio is one step, video is another. I still haven’t done that and have no desire to, mostly because I could never watch a movie with other people ever again.
But at 1x speed, movies with a lot of dialogues feel very slow. That’s not fun…
Conclusion
Listening to audio at 2x speed will annoy people around you but always remember that consuming (good) information twice faster can only lead to increasing how smart you are.
You will retain more information, process it faster, improvise better, and have more energy.
Don’t you want that?
Start gradually, using content you’re already familiar with. Put subtitles. Always push through, but take breaks when you need it. Don’t give up, and surely you’ll form one of the greatest learning habits and become smarter faster than you could ever anticipate!
You can do this!
Ready to Skill Up?
If you want to become more skilled and be prepared for a better tomorrow, check out SkillUp Academy.