Back in January I wrote a post entitled “Double-Barrel Information Intake” about an experiment I was about to conduct in which I would simultaneously read and listen to a book. After about two months of going through the exercise, I can now report the results. I will not be adopting this approach to my nonfiction reading moving forward. In fact, I don’t think I’ll be using audio versions of nonfiction books at all in the future as I haven’t gotten the results I wanted to obtain. That isn’t to say that I won’t listen to a work of fiction ever again. It’s just that right now I don’t have a commute and making my commute better was the function of those books.

My conclusion about listening to nonfiction books was echoed by some findings that I took in (somewhat ironically) through Cal Newport’s podcast describing how there is magic in the time spent between words and sentences that allows for the absorption of material and forming synaptic connections in the brain. When I tried to click through the link in the episode description to the study he referenced, the site wouldn’t open in my browser, but here is a link anyway: LINK. There may be broader evolutionary implications of those findings given the shift away from prolonged and focused reading in favor of ever-shorter bursts of dopamine in short-form video applications but this post isn’t a polemic; it’s just me reporting my own experience and being honest about something that I tried and will not continue.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve been reading four different books, each at a more-or-less consistent time and for a different purpose. The early returns on this experiment are positive. Maybe I’ll write another post about this approach in a few months.