I just hit 10,000 hours of listening to audiobooks and I think that makes me worse at reading actual books now

3 comments

3 Comments

sagecooper27d agoMost Upvoted

Actually never thought about it like that but maybe the issue is that audiobooks train your brain to get info in a completely different way. Reading physical text forces your eyes to track and your brain to decode symbols, while audiobooks just feed you the sound directly. Its like the difference between watching a cooking video and reading a recipe, you absorb it differently. So yeah, 10k hours of one mode probably makes your brain lazy for the other mode. Might be worth mixing in some actual book reading just to keep that skill from rusting completely. But honestly if audiobooks work for you then who cares, right?

the_wendy27d ago

Honestly, that point about the cooking video vs a recipe really hit me. I used to think reading was reading no matter how you did it, but you're right that your brain is doing something totally different with each format. When I listen to a book I can zone out and still catch the gist, but with physical text you have to stay locked in or you lose your place completely. So yeah @sagecooper, I think you convinced me that 10k hours of audiobooks probably does dull the skill of decoding written words. Im gonna start mixing in some actual page turning to keep that muscle from going totally numb.

susansingh27d ago

Yeah @sagecooper, I tried going pure audiobooks for a year and could barely focus on a page after, mixing in real reading fixed that quick.