Productivity and Podcasts

You can be obsessed with podcasts. You can listen to them every day, while you’re driving, while you shower, while you run. But that might not be a good idea. There’s a limit to how much information your brain can take in and a much lower limit of how much of that information you can apply to your life——can actually remember and use.

So this post is about why I quit podcasts. Not forever, and I might listen to an episode of Hello Internet every now and then, but the obsessive, mega-consumption of podcasts that was my life for the past few months is over. I decided that I’ve learned the most important things that podcasts could teach me, and now it’s time to apply what I’ve learned instead of trying to learn more.

The lesson is simple: Don’t wait. Don’t waste your time. Instead, do. Chase Jarvis says it best in his video “Stop Planning. Start Doing.” The entire message of the video, the message that I kept hearing, over and over, from everyone from Tony Robins to Neil Gaiman, was to simply DO. “Great ideas,” Jarvis said, “. . . mean nothing unless they’re actualized.”

Podcasts taught me primarily two things: one, how to be more productive and, two, what happens when you work hard. All those interviews with successful people are proof of where smart, hard work can take a person.

What I’m not saying in this post is that no one should listen to podcasts. Quite the contrary. I encourage everyone I know to listen to podcasts. I think they’re amazing. But if you find yourself listening more than doing——just the way I found myself——then it’s time to reconsider how you spend your time. It’s not simply about filling your time in the most productive way you can (which can include podcasts) but about DOING, doing those things that will build your future (your career, your business, your ability to connect with people). That’s what the podcasts I listen to taught me: MAKE your dreams become a reality, don’t wait for them.

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Since quitting podcasts, my priorities have straightened out. Instead of thinking about reading more I DO read more, at least two hours a day. Instead of just gathering a list of movies to watch, I make up time in my schedule to take a break from studying and watch a movie. Instead of listening to CGP Grey and Make Hurley talk about time-tracking I do my own time-tracking, breaking down nearly every minute of every day to make sure I’m on track in terms of my school/work/recreational goals. All this because I’ve turned off the voice outside my head and turned on the voice inside my head, the one that already knows a lot, I just have to give it a chance to speak.