Lectures isn't just about feeding the information into your brain. Half the battle of learning what the professor has to say is to process the material in your head, to let it bob around in your head a while. I often find that I can get a lot of that work done while still in my seat, as long as I allow those thoughts to bubble up.

In other words, allow creative thoughts about the things the lecturer is saying to form – wander around in idea-space a bit – and think about them, while simultaneously keeping up with the thread of the speech. You'll gain a lot more from your time in the lecture hall, and it'll also be a lot more fun. A lecture shouldn't just be (and doesn't have to be) dry information stuffing.

Genuinely, good for you. I’m glad that works for you. But it’s a strange reply. I’ve described an attention disorder and a method for coping with it and your suggestion is that maybe I shouldn’t have the disorder in the first place. Which I agree with, but it’s not particularly helpful. I suppose that’s not fair. Let me try again: I’d love it if I could mindwander a bit while still paying attention to the lecture, the entire problem is that I cannot do this. That inability is called an attention disorder. If I have time to mindwander at all then I immediately get lost in my thoughts and am unable to pay any attention to the lecture.

Well, it's ambiguous from my perspective, with no more information, whether or not the behaviour was a genuine disorder or just caused by bad habits (akin to causes mentioned in the currently highest voted post[1]). It sounds like it was the former, in which case I'm sorry. I guess I was also not really thinking about it as a reply to you specifically, but rather to the entire audience of readers here on HN who I wanted to give a heads up on, in the context of your comment, that it's possible to experience lectures in more ways than one.

[1] http://nautil.us/issue/52/the-hive/modern-media-is-a-dos-att...

I don't think it's a disorder or a bad habit. People process information at different speeds, if you're out of your comfort zone, that processing will be inefficient.

To be fair, your original comment did not mention a disorder, and a reasonable person could assume a lack of a disorder from the comment alone.

It's true that I did not use the word 'disorder' and I understand that not everyone has given much thought to attention disorders. But being unable to choose where to focus attention or to sustain that focus is what an attention disorder is.

Have you tried mindfulness? I have had the same experience as you have (it sounds like) in that I am able to speed listen more effectively at 2-2.5x than at 1x. Since I've started trying to be more mindful and meditate regularly, the improvement in focus I've experienced is incredible.

I agree that the idea of mindwandering while paying attention is foreign. I think I had a slightly different response than the grandparent, which is to drag the rest of the people in the seats along with me. I am sure there were many people who were bothered by my questions and hand-raising (in 200 person lectures), but sometimes my questions were real questions silently shared by others in the class. I think it isn't uncommon that students treat lectures as very inconvenient 3D video explanations, and many professors are so bored and detached that to veer slightly off course is to disgruntle them significantly. I think of it this way: as the student, paying tuition, your instructor is effectively working for you. If you left, they would not be able to do this part of their job (which some would prefer). If your professor isn't facilitating your task at hand (conveying a holistic understanding of the topic under discussion), then they aren't being effective at what you are paying for them to do, and it might behoove one in such a position to take active corrective action (drag a better explanation of the topic at hand out of the professor). This is all somewhat cavalier as I haven't been in school for a long time, but I feel like it was an approach that helped me, given it is hard for me to multitask as described, and would have helped others whom I have known.

Thank you for bringing this up. Throughout college I have had this issue and one of my favorite things was when a professor would publish the audio recordings of lectures so that I could listen at 1.75x-2.5x and rewind in case I wanted to rethink something. I also really enjoyed that app where you have words changing at the same location at 600 wpm. I tried speed reading a normal book but I would always get way more tired than with this approach. I really wish they had multiple choices for learning instead of the same technique for past 10 000 years which is known not to work for everyone

I like this idea, but I have found it to not work very well in practice. I would constantly get lost in lectures because the interesting new bits would kick off questions in my mind that needed to be resolved before it made sense for me to continue with more information. So I'd sit there exploring the new ideas—which was typically pretty beneficial—but then when I tuned back in I wouldn't know what they were talking about. When I get into that 'exploring mode' it tends to shut everything else out, so the 'simultaneously keeping up with the thread of the speech' isn't very doable, at least in my case.

Books are an intrinsically better format for this since the amount of time required to 'process' the new information will vary a lot from person to person, and you get complete control with books. I can't see any benefit to the lecture format aside from mass consumption—aside from question-asking, which I do think is vital, but it is typically under-used. Books + lots of questions to an expert seems ideal.

I rather replay the interesting section (for complicated stuff even on normal speed) and speed-listen to what I know and what is easily understandable or booring.

With video tutorials I have the same problem. On normal speed I will work ahead, take a wrong turn because I didn't know where the lecture would go or drift off in to something slightly creative and than notice that I missed a section where finally something new was explained. So I have to skip back and find where I started missing something (Something really really annoying with audio material; No thumbnails, no search, no skimming backwards, mostly no identification possible from a single frame or word (the easiest way to find a part again, to which I listened before, is to remember where on my journey I was when I listened to that part and where that was in relation to where I heard what is currently playing)).

I suppose if you don't experience it, it can be hard to relate. For me it's something like a buffer underrun. I get bored and frustrated in between words if they come too slowly.

Another analogy might be trying to ride a bike too slowly. It's very difficult not to wobble extremely and fall off. It takes more effort to ride slowly. My mind can't wander with slow speech because it takes great effort and attention to maintain ideas in active memory long enough to make it through sentences. I am better able to have branching thoughts while keeping up with the thread of speech when the speech is faster.

I frequently drive with audiobooks on and it is usually not possible for me to follow along without a speed boost of at least about 25% or so.

I use headphones with a play/pause button on them so I can pause/rewind from time to time to re-digest things.

This was the main reason I switched back to 1x. I want to listen, not just be blasted with data.

I was studying for a cert and needed to review some material faster so I started doing 1.5x and 1.7x up to 2x. What's amazing is how quickly you adapt. The pauses in speech seem to take FOREVER, even at 2x, and when you slow down to 1.5x it seems positively glacial. But you're right, you need to focus. It leaves a lot less time for letting your mind wander. You don't get anything for free. I sometimes watch NFL condensed games and they cut out all the non-play activity so you can watch a game in 40 mins-- which sounds great, but you realize it's 40 mins of intense focus if you want to follow what's going on.

> The pauses in speech seem to take FOREVER

No kidding. Overcast has a "Smartspeed" feature that cuts out these pauses. The counter on my app says it's saved me 195 hours to date.

I'm at 702 hours. Crazy - that's almost a month of silence I've avoided.

"Silence is the perfectest herald of joy" - William Shakespeare

I may get downvoted as just an old man yelling at clouds, but I wish that people would actually take more time to enjoy silence in its own right.

My own kids seem to like doing everything with a pair of headphones on, or a video playing on their devices constantly, but some of my own moments of pure bliss have been sitting in my garden, sans technology, with a book or just petting my cat and stopping to breathe, listen to the sounds of nature and think about ideas.

> I wish that people would actually take more time to enjoy silence in its own right.

It's pretty hard to enjoy silence in two second chunks.

Someone might use smartspeed to save half an hour, and then use that time to enjoy nature uninterrupted.

I'm not going to downvote you, but you basically are yelling at clouds. The two kinds of 'silence' are completely unrelated.

There is silence which is bad editing or a disorganised podcast, and there is silence which is intentional, after a particular point has been made or idea been voiced.

Even two seconds of silent time is useful to ponder and reflect. When I am not in 'flow' state while working, I will often just look away from the screen to pat my cat or pick up my guitar for a few seconds to noodle unplugged. I find that helps me to step down from frenetic brain activity and let my subconscious stew on things.

To equate it to a musical analogy - sometimes it is the space between the notes. As much as I respect the technical ability of guitarists that can cram 3000 notes per minute in a long shred solo, I cannot listen to that for more than 30 seconds before my brain is screaming for some relief. I would much rather listen to a blues guitarist or saxophonist play a few notes with enough pauses between phrases to fully appreciate them and wait for the next one with anticipation.

There is artistic silence where thoughtful purpose is put to the distance between things, there is autonomous silence where you get to take the opportunity to make space between things, then there's silence that is forced on you.

Some silence just is not enriching. I would rather spend an hour in a forest than waiting at the DMV. I would rather enjoy a cup of coffee than wait 10 minutes for a colleague to arrive on time to a meeting.

There are some things that are worth experiencing in their fullest, and there are some things that are only worth experiencing by skimming through.

Like some books are worth deep study, reading, rereading, analyzing, digging, and getting every ounce of value from them. Others give all they have in a rush.

I will be a relatively young man joining you in yelling at the clouds.

I am in my 20s now but I do agree with you. I enjoy just being with silence around me, especially when reading.

I mostly agree, except it can be almost impossible to find an interruption free environment. Many work in an open office (blech) and live in thin-walled apartments with music-pounding (or just floor stomping) neighbors. The only "silent" time I can get is in the car or late at night when everyone else is asleep. I wish I could find genuine silence. Half of my headphone time is done without anything actually playing. It's to drown out the incessant noise around me.

Yeah, one of the reasons I value silence so much is because I don't get a lot of it during the day. I work in an open office, I use public transport, I go to a swimming pool. At evenings I usually spent some time with my wife. So by the time I have some silence, it is night. If, our neighbours are not being too loud of course.

As a consequence, I really appreciate the quiet moments and nature walks etc.

That’s one of the things I do when editing my YouTube be videos. Cut out all pauses in speech.

I find that when I’m watching/listening something as long as there are no pauses, I don’t need the 2x speed. Particularly because I find speech often difficult to follow at anything more than 1.3x while at 1.3x the pauses are still way too long.

Smartspeed feature has been a godsend.

> That’s one of the things I do when editing my YouTube videos. Cut out all pauses in speech.

This is also a something that NPR has been doing on shows for years - perhaps not 'all' but they certainly do a lot of cleanup.

They also have some training material online, which may be of use to many people doing editing: http://training.npr.org/audio/the-ear-training-guide-for-aud...

The transcript of Pulling Back the Curtain may also be of interest, I think it may have been rebroadcast at some point as well so audio may get turn up.

Edit: http://www.wnyc.org/story/129697-pulling-back-the-curtain/

> The counter on my app says it's saved me 195 hours to date.

You think you saved 195 hours, but in reality you saved far less hours (I'm not saying you didn't save any hours).

Silences serve to aid your brain from getting tired, allowing you to catch up and process the information, or to get in diffused mode of thinking.

If silences were completely useless they wouldn't ever be used. You'd download an audiobook from the official vendor, and it wouldn't contain any silences.

I use the skip silence in the android app Podcast Addict. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bambuna.po...

I certainly don't notice it easily but I have saved several hundred hours according to it.

Is this able to play Audio Books? Or is there an Android app that can skip silence for audio books?

Could you tell me where to find that counter? I've looked everywhere… I for the life of mine can find it. I even tweeted the author. Google, looked at lots of reviews to find a clue… eventually I gave up and figured the counter must have been removed in an update before I got the app.

PocketCasts on Android does the same kind of silence removal. You can find it there in Settings > Stats. I recently wiped my phone but I'm pretty sure it was in the hundreds of hours saved before then.

It's at the bottom of the settings menu - click the little Overcast logo in the top left and scroll down.

(Just went through this exercise to find it last week)

It should be noted that it's in very small / grey font at the very bottom.

Also, holy shit, this has saved me 255 hours, not counting speedups. That's crazy.

Settings (top left icon from main screen) --> scroll allll the way down.

"Smart Speed has saved you an extre __ hours beyond speed adjustments alone."

Same here I can’t find the counter in my app although everyone else seems to have it.

Whoa, that's a lot! Just curious, how many hours of podcasts is that? Do you have that information available?

And with that experience, what are your favorite podcasts?

Is this a premium feature? I also can't find it.

No, but you have have to turn the smart speed feature on for some time before seeing a savings counter appear on the settings page.

I think not—I'm registered, and I can't find it either.

571 hours for me

I am convinced that a lot of podcasters take their cues from radio and other forms of broadcast journalism that lack the ability to let the user jump back 15 seconds if they missed something. I have never had a conversation with anyone where they talked as slow as people do on podcasts. Maybe it is some sort of post-production process to slow things down and make it possible for people who are not really paying attention to follow along, but if it were not for the ability to speed things up I would have abandoned most podcasts a long time ago.

Similarly, I've noticed that if I listen at a comfortable pace (1.25x-1.5x) for a while, and then switch back to normal speed, it feels like the speaker is deliberately speaking slowly and hyper-enunciating, like they're talking to a small child or person with learning problems.

>What's amazing is how quickly you adapt.

At some point you'll start to hear what birds and other fast talking animals are saying. I'm not joking. I mean you'll still probably wouldn't understand them.

" so I started doing 1.5x and 1.7x up to 2x. What's amazing is how quickly you adapt..."

Listen to folks using screen readers reading off menus and navigation and such. Those users adapt to stuff going much much faster than 2x!

I onced listened in and got nothing. Found a claims of 300 words per minute [0] and 450 wpm [1], where normal speech is 150 wpm. So, 3x should be achievable with some training.

[0] https://webaim.org/techniques/screenreader/ [1] https://www.vincit.fi/en/blog/software-development-450-words...

I used to use one of those speed reader apps. I found that if I set it at ridiculous speed - 10,000 wpm! - you can still read the words but not really "read" anything i.e. be able to say anything intelligent about what you just "read."

But then I would shift back to 4,000 wpm and suddenly it seemed so easy to keep pace. And the longer you stayed at 10,000 wpm the easier 4,000 became.

I feel our brains are totally up the challenge.

I've listened to a number of fiction audiobooks at 3x. I find it takes a couple of minutes to adapt to a new narrator/speaker at 3x, but it's not really a big thing.

I'm not sure I'd retain much from a technical conversation at 3x -- for me the drop seems to be somewhere between 2x and 3x.

I read a lot and my pace naturally slows down or speeds up depending on the density and difficulty of the material; I'm sure a similar effect must apply to the speeds you need to follow a lecture or podcast at to actually understand it. I can't read a book-length classical epic poem or a dense technical book at the same kind of speed I can comfortably read a Sherlock Holmes book (well, I can, but I won't retain anything).

Screenreaders are very redundant.

It's one thing to listen to a very consistent voice repeating very much familiar material. Another to have novel or complex material thrown at you.

My listening speeds range from 1x to 2x, for the most part. If I'm focused on material, 1.5x is almost always listenable. If I'm highly focused, or the speaker is slow and boring, 2x+. If the material is difficult or the speaker exceedingly good, intelligent, and the material well-prepared, 1x - 1.25x works quite well.

Yeah, I have a few blind friends and the screen readers are just insanely fast. I got to the point where I could understand most of what one said at max speed; granted this was back in the late 90s so the voice tech wasn't what it is today.

Do you mean 60 minutes or are you watching the games at 1.5x?

In NFL games the clock continues to run during non-play time like the offensive line resetting after a completed pass or a run or a sack so if your stripping out that time as well because nothing actually interesting is really happening you can get below the nominal 60 minute of actual play time.

Yeah, this. The condensed games actually include some time where the clock is stopped, too-- eg, the couple seconds leading up to a snap, or whatever. My least favorite part is sometimes they cut out what a penalty was called for and what the impact was.

Got it, thanks. Wow, that is an aggressive approach. IMO watching the players get back in formation, etc. is at least a little bit interesting in part because watching that process helps you predict what is going to happen after the snap.

Same here. At 1x speed all but the most dense of lectures give my mind time to wander, and then I miss a few minutes of material. At 2x speed I find it much easier to stay focused, and can actually spend 30-60 minutes listening to a podcast without getting distracted. The fact that it also saves time is merely a bonus for me.

Exactly, and that same focus and extra time means that you can stop/rewind/replay when you find something you don't know to root out the source of confusion at 1x or 0.5x.

Most lectures at 1x border on unwatchable except for the very best presenters (and then you wonder how much you're learning as opposed to being WOWed.

Reminds me of the way movies can occasionally be a lot more engaging when I somehow missed the beginning: so much less predictable, and events feel more like they are happening because of hidden causality and less because of hidden (or barely obfuscated) plot requirements.

+1 on this. I used to better at listening to "lecture" material at school, but in the last years it seemed to deteriorate. Even in university I noticed myself drifting away in thought, although the material was much more interesting to me than back at school. Same for any kind of webinar. When I did my first online course I switched to 1.5 and was pretty dumbfounded how nice it was to consume at what seemed like the proper speed. But it highly depends on the speaker. If someone speaks fast, 1x is fine - if someone is extremely slow, I'll use 2x.

But I mostly listen to podcasts for entertainment reasons (i.e. people I wanna listen to about topics that interest me) so my desire to speed through is not so high.

When listening to a (non-fiction) audiobook or lecture about a novel topic, do you not find yourself needing time to think? When do you integrate the new information or ideas being presented into your existing framework of understanding?

Same here, the only time I need to slow down is if I am REALLY unfamiliar with the subject matter.

Reviewing data structures? 2x

Ad retargeting in marketing course? 1.5x what wait 1x

And then its back to 2x, I concentrate at listening better

Me too, though I'm worried indulging this tendency is building into bad habits, or traits or somesuch.

For lectures, I tend to speedwatch with stops, replays and skips. In some cases, I am 100% convinced that like you, I'd have never been able to stay tuned. The whole thing has a tendency towards escalation, and the result comes with its own troubles.

Holy crap this might actually help me.

enjoy :)

it really feels good to pump interesting thoughts in at the speed limit of perception and recognition :)

If I don't speed it up, I get bored and start daydreaming. Whether I'm running, lifting, riding the train, cooking, whatever, if I don't amp the speed up I inevitably get bored.

I think the trick is trying to be ahead of the lecturer and guess where it is going, always a step ahead.