When business picks up (with life and work), your free time starts to disappear. Although I listen to a ton of podcasts, I have to pick and choose what I listen to when there are more podcasts than hours in the day. Sometimes I delete them right away. Other times I do a mass exodus.

One thing that helps you from getting cut from the list – duration.

Train for 2x Speed

My wife hates it. She will walk into a room and hear chipmunks coming from my phone. She might give me a side-eye, but I’m not even aware of the issue. My brain is so configured to listening to everything 2-time speed, I don’t even notice. Finally, she will ask me to turn it off and I get the hint.

It is like torture listening at normal speed. My wife and I listen at normal speed on car rides and I want to pull out my hair. It doesn’t bother me with music or television, but podcasts need to be fast.

Start at 1.25x

First thing first, find a podcast on a topic you understand. I could listen to Walt Disney World podcasts and finish most of their sentences. It’s not really in-depth, highly-complex topics. There’s a new attraction opening in May – got it! It helps if the host is already a slow talker (or just a radio professional).

Listen to these podcasts at 1.25x speed for about a week.

Ramp It Up

Once your brain has adjusted, try a few more podcasts at 1.25x speed. Check to see if you can comprehend some new topics. Sampling a few podcasts will help you notice the different rates of speech. If you check all of the boxes, move it up to 1.5x.

• Can you understand what they are saying?
• Do you have to rewind multiple times to comprehend the subject/point?
• Does listening to it on speaker annoy your significant other?*

As you sample podcasts, you will find that some hosts already talk at 2x speed (pointing to myself). Unless you are from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you probably can’t listen at 4x and retain – so these podcasts either get the ax or you slow them down.

Next Level Podcast Listening

Once your brain catches up, you can jump to 1.75x and the almighty 2x speed. I’m not an expert, but your brain can do some amazing things. Have you ever seen a paragraph with all of the letters scrambled?

I think our brain also does the same with podcasts. We might not hear every little word, but we can get the concept.

Saving Time by Listening to a Podcast at 2x Speed

It’s pretty simple – you listen to podcasts in half of the time. Your one hour podcast is now 30-minutes. This is also super helpful for training videos. Corporate doesn’t need to know you did the training in half of the time – time to binge The Office again.

In my case, I can double up my podcasts. My little 10-Minute podcasts turn out to be around 4 minutes of actual listening (don’t be scared to use that skip for commercials and bumpers). Most podcasts have a similar format so you know when you hit the fast-forward button.

If you don’t have 4-minutes in your day, then how are you reading this? Busted!

Guess what? I have a podcast suggestion for you.

The Premise of Marketing School

I found this podcast when I was searching for Google Analytics podcasts and tips. Turns out that I’ve seen the name Neil Patel before. I’ve either stumbled upon one of his helpful blogs or heard him featured on another podcast. He and his co-host Eric Siu know a thing or two about marketing.

He is a New York Times Bestselling author. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations.

NeilPatel.com

My name is Eric Siu and I’m here to give you the tools and processes to help you grow both personally and professionally. I’ll reveal secrets from entrepreneurs that have grown multi-million to billion dollar companies.

GrowthEverywhere.com

It’s no doubt that I am listening to some smart, successful guys. So what do they talk about?

As outlined on their website (I won’t do another quote in fear that three in a row might cause chaos), they bring you actionable marketing advice – every single day.

Fair enough.

Why Did I Pick the Marketing School Podcast?

I will keep this really short and sweet. I featured this podcast because each episode is under ten minutes. Yes, that means if you listen to it at 2x speed and skip the intro – the podcast is less than 5-minutes each day.

Now Try Listening to the Podcast at 2x Speed (or faster than normal)

We will still grab a topic about Google Analytics.