The Lazy Genius Podcast - #336 - How to Lazy Genius Audiobooks

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

Y’all know I love an episode about reading, so I’m pumped about this. Audiobooks are one of my favorite ways to read, but that’s a recent development. As a new-ish convert, I’m really excited to help you figure out your relationship with audiobooks and how to Lazy Genius them in your own life, whatever that means for you.   Helpful Companion Links The Libby app Audible Memberships Chirp Sign up for the Latest Lazy Listens email. Grab a copy of my book The Lazy Genius Kitchen or The Lazy Genius Way! (Affiliate links) Download a transcript of this episode.     This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, you are listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi, and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 336. How to Lazy Genius audiobooks. You all know I love an episode about reading, so I'm really pumped about this. Audio books are one of my favorite ways to read, but that's a recent development. I didn't get into them until 2020, probably. So as a newish convert, to audiobooks, I'm really excited to help you figure out your relationship with them and how to lazy genius them in your own life, whatever that means for you. All right, first, we're going to walk through the five lazy genius steps, as we often do, and then I will share a laundry list of my personal tips and how I listen and integrate audiobooks and with the rest of my reading life. Before we do that, though, I want to make it very clear for anyone who is insecure about this, that listening to an audiobook is without question reading a book. It counts as reading. I don't think that is as controversial of a statement as it used to be, but listening to an audiobook counts as reading.

When I recorded the audiobook for my first book, The Lazy Genius Way, the producer casually said that audiobooks didn't count as reading, which was hilarious, considering she was like a literal audiobook producer. But I remember, I kindly told her, I was like, you know, I disagree with you for a lot of reasons. The simplest being that people who are blind and cannot read words on a page in the traditional way are totally reading if they listen to a book instead. Would you say to a blind person that they're not actually reading if they're listening to a book? That is kind of my strongest argument for it, but there are so many reasons why it is in fact reading, like even for how our brain processes it. Okay. So we're eventually going to talk about like the things that might be

keeping you from enjoying audiobooks more. But I'm going to go ahead and nip this one in the bud right now that the validity of audiobooks as reading should not be one of those things that keeps you from doing it. Audiobooks count as rating. It's rating. Full stop. Okay. Now, figuring out how to lazy genius audiobooks likely does not require some overwrought complicated thought processor system. In fact, I would encourage you to avoid that. But I do think that running through the five steps to lazy genius anything, it could help you see some holes in your audiobook thinking or reading life as a whole that you didn't notice before. So let's breeze through those five steps. Now when you apply the five steps to lazy genius anything, you have to know

what you're trying to lazy genius. Now in this case, it's audiobooks. But think first if there is something a little more specific about audiobooks that you're wanting to do. Are you wanting to listen more? listen to them at all like you're actually trying to begin. Maybe it's that you've had kind of a bad run and you're looking to find ones that are interesting and that you're going to really finish. So what's the general challenge here? That'll be helpful to name as we continue through these five steps. All right. So let's look at those steps. If you are new here or if you forgot them, they are prioritize, essentialize, organize, organize, and systemize. Okay. So let's brief look at how these can apply to audiobooks. First step is prioritize. What matters to you about your

audiobook experience, whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish? If you want to make audiobooks a more regular part of your daily rhythm and reading life and not just listen to one random one every few months when you think about it, your priority could be ease. You want an easy experience of finding and starting a book. That way you'll actually read. Another priority could be that you listen to audiobooks instead of doing something else, like that it's your first choice when you have something to listen to. Another priority is that you just want to enjoy it. Maybe you have tried audiobooks and you haven't had a lot of success. So the priority is that you like it. Whatever it is, name what matters. What matters about your audiobook experience. Second, essentialize. When we

is centralize, we get rid of what's in the way, and we make sure that we have what we need. Do you have an app that you use? Do you have an app that you don't use? Do you have a pair of headphones or AirPods or something that you find that it's easy to listen with? Or do you have earbuds that you like, but you're always losing them? Is what's in the way that there are too many choices of what to read, too many distractions when listening? Maybe you need to get rid of the expectation that you'll listen to audiobooks all the time or for longer than 10 minutes at a time. Maybe you just need to relax your expectations of how long you're going to take. Maybe you need to have a go-to, decide once app to listen through rather than trying to choose

from several. Maybe it is that you have a bloated TBR, a to be read list. Or maybe you don't even have any kind of list and you need one. Maybe you don't have a place to go for recommendations. You see how many things that you might need? or that might be in your way based on what matters to you? Essentialize. What's in the way of what matters?

What's missing to help support what matters? Knowing those things really does help. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the Orange One. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like Habinier, yes.

Save the everyday with Amazon. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dacre Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw. A special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. The third step in our process is to organize.

This is when we put things in their place. I love to organize. I love putting things in their place. So what do you need to organize in your relationship to audiobooks? Maybe you need to find a literal place for those earbuds that you keep losing. I have like in our junk drawer, there's a little basket of electronic-y things, and that's always where my AirPods go, because I would lose them constantly, constantly. So that's where they go now.

That's the only place that they're allowed to go. Maybe you can organize when you listen, as in you choose a specific time of day or maybe an activity that goes with audio booking, which is now a word we're going to use. Maybe you need to organize your TBR or you need to put your audio. audiobook apps on the front page of your phone, so you'll be more likely to see them and listen. You could put lots of things in their place. I have organized how I search for audiobooks by doing it one particular way. I use the Libby app, which is connected to public libraries all over the country, and you connect to your own library, and you can check out both digital and audiobooks, which is great.

So what I'll do is I will search for audiobooks with the filter available now. Then I sort those by most popular and I go from there. I figure if they're popular, they're not terrible. But because I also have some limitations to the audiobooks that I personally listen to, I'm able to grab one that will likely work for me and be able to listen to it right away. And that leads me to step four, which is personalize. You want to feel like yourself and do things in a way that makes sense for you. A great way to do that in terms of audiobooks and reading in general is with

book words. I have talked before about book words, words that are often used to describe books you like. If you have a list of book words that you know are usually going to be home runs for you, then you can read reviews and descriptions of books and kind of know, oh, that might be for me. Some of my book words are dark, twisty, fairy tale, magic, circus, sharp and funny. Now on the other side of the coin are bookwords I do not usually enjoy. There are bookwords to avoid. Rivening. Saga. Moving. Beautiful, poignant, sparse, vivid, and inspirational. I don't usually like books that actively are described as those things. I also have the same loose limitations around genres. So like I love thrillers of all kinds, especially domestic and spy. I love fantasy, anything with magic and world building or dystopias or factions or weird ways that society is crumbled. I love sharp modern romances. I like weird little books that sometimes skew a bit dark.

Genres I don't love are historical fiction, family sagas, stories about groups of people and and only that, like they don't do anything. and then a more recent realization that has nothing to do with genres, I don't really like books on a boat. Now books at a circus? Yes. Books on a college campus? Yes. Books in another world, particularly if it has dragons or evil fairies. Give me all of them. But I don't really love books that happen on a boat. Now all of that is a little silly, but also is super hopeful. Having bookwords is such a great way for you to personalize your reading life. And I think it's even more helpful with audiobooks. The audiobook experience is different than reading books that you hold in your hand. There are books that I don't want to listen to, but I love reading on a page.

You might have to listen to a few different kinds of things to get the hang of what you personally like. That's why this step is personalized. But don't automatically assume that your book words for your handheld books are the same as they are for audiobooks. My two favorite audiobook genres are thrillers or like, you know, mysteries, murders. of any kind, something like that. And then celebrity memoirs. I don't love fantasy or romance on audio, even though I just mentioned both as genres that I love. I especially don't love my weird little books

that sometimes skewed arc on audio. No, part of what I love about those books is the imagination. And someone else's voice might impact how I filter that imagination. I want to be in charge of how those words are read, not someone else, unless Neil Gaiman is narrating. That's the only difference. If he's narrating a weird little book, then I'm into it. So personalize your audiobook listening experience by slowly discovering your list of book words. It is so helpful. And then finally, step five is to systemize. How do you keep your audiobook life or your particular challenge around audiobooks in a flow?

How does it keep going? You could decide once. That's a lazy genius principle that you will always listen to audiobooks when you drive to carpool, or when you wash the dishes, or when you eat lunch, done. You could put audiobooks as the backdrop to a specific routine that you already do, you know, because we love to build the right routines as lazy geniuses. You might ask the magic question, what can I do now to make listening to my audiobook easier later? Maybe the answer is you download a book now that you know you're going to like so that when it's time to actually listen later, you don't waste your listening

time trying to choose. Basically, you can apply one of the 13 lazy genius principles or just have an idea to where you are in your in your audiobook journey and see how it works for you so that you can keep things in a flow. Okay, now I want to share with you how I personally lazy genius my audiobooks. First, let's talk about how audiobooks fit into my whole reading life. And I think that's important, especially if you also have other formats of books that you read. I almost always have at least four books going at once, two physical books, one fiction and one nonfiction, a book on my Kindle. If I'm feeling spicy, even sometimes a separate Kindle book on my Kindle app on my phone, and then an audiobook. Now, none of those books can be similar. None of them can. They all have to be different.

obviously the nonfiction is fine because it's nonfiction and it's doing its own thing. But the other, you know, three to four books cannot be the same. They cannot. I can't listen to a thriller and also read a different thriller because I get, I get the murderers mixed up, you know? So I try to not have stories happen in the same type of universe, so to speak. Like I will do a modern romance alongside a book about, you know, woodland fairies or whatever. That is a very necessary component to my overall reading life and how I choose what audiobook to read next. There has to be some sort of differentiation and distinction so I don't lose momentum or get confused in any direction. So when it's time for me to choose an audiobook,

I always choose something that is different enough from what I'm reading elsewhere. And that goes for any time I'm choosing something new no matter the format. I look at everything else I'm reading. Now, I already mentioned I used the Libby app to borrow audiobooks from my library for free. I also have an audible membership, mostly because my son Ben, he loves listening to audiobooks, particularly like Big Kid Epics, like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. So after I bought a couple of those for him, I was like, well, I might as well just get a membership. So I did. I don't use my credit every month.

You know, you get one purchase credit every month. and I don't usually use them like clockwork because you can save them. They kind of roll over. So often they do that. They carry over or I just save them for Ben. And then so I use Libby. I use Audible. And then I also have a third audiobook app called CHRP. Churp is a service that shares daily audiobook deals over email. Kind of like how Ann Bogle shares her daily Kindle deals over email. And it's really great if you are a big audiobook listener and you have a harder time finding options at the library. a lot of these audiobooks are discounted to like, you know, two to five bucks. Also, people love Libro FM.

So there are lots of different ways that you can listen to audiobooks. But those are the ones I use. Primarily Libby, a little bit of audible, and then sometimes chirp. Now, I have an iPhone and I use AirPods. And I've mentioned this many times before, but y'all, I am a one AirPods girl. I'm a one earbud girl. That way I can listen to my book, but I also can hear when a kid calls me or the doorbell ring. or whatever else. It also doubles the battery life of your listening time because if one pod

dies, the other one is ready to go and you just switch ears. Okay, so I have shared my audiobook words, how I choose my audiobooks, how they connect with the rest of the books I'm reading, the apps I use. And finally, let me talk about the specifics of how I listen, like the narrator, speed, the genre a situation, the listening experience, if you will. Now, I'm a, I'm a very picky audiobook person. Very, very picky. For books that I might use credits for or buy on major sale, like if I'm really going to commit to using money to get an audiobook, I will always, always, always, click on the listen to a sample button to figure out if I like the narrator, unless it's a celebrity and you kind of know, but I always listen to the sample.

And usually I can tell pretty fast. I don't care how good a book is. If the narrator is not good or doesn't, you know, you're just not into it, the reading experience is not going to be good either. It's just not. I heard that about fourth wing. I loved the book fourth wing. I cannot wait for the next one to come out.

It's like in a month, y'all. I'm so excited. But I read the physical book of that. But then I heard several people say they didn't love the book. And I was like, I'm sorry, what? but they were also people who listened to it on audio. And the narrator I heard was not great. At least not great for that book.

There is absolutely chemistry between the narrator and the story. And if the two don't fit, it just does not work. Sometimes you'll read one book done by a narrator and you're like, oh, I love this narrator. And then you try another book by that narrator and it's not the same. So pay attention to the narrator and the combination of the narrator in the book. You might have a hard time with audiobooks because you're just actually having a hard time with narrators. Some of my favorite narrators include Marin Ireland, particularly her reading of Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson. That's one of my favorite audiobook experiences of all time.

Richard Armitage. He does the Jackman. I mean, he does a lot of books, but he did the Jackman Evans Murder Mystery Series. It's on Audible. I wrote about those. I reviewed those in my newsletter because I listened to like six or seven, eight or nine. Is it nine? is a lot of them.

Like over a stretch, I really like him. He's great. Jim Dale, of course, who did Harry Potter and the Night Circus. I already mentioned Neil Gaiman. I love it when Neil Gaiman narrates his own books. Oh, my goodness. Anyone who narrates anything by Stephen King because they just always do it right. I also would look for actors.

I personally love actors as narrators because they're good performers. This is why I love Derek Jacoby. He is so good as a narrator. and then also British women. If you are a lady and you speak as though you are from the UK and without too much vocal fry, I am in. It doesn't matter what you're telling me. I'm like, I'm here for it.

So you can search the name of a narrator that you like and you can find books by that person. You can be watching a movie and think, man, I really like his voice. And then Google James McAvoy plus audiobook and see what comes up. Neverwhere is what comes up, by the way. Or you can keep a list of audiobook narrators that you have enjoyed. on your notes app, on your phone, so that you can just, you know, remember. You can keep looking for books read by those folks.

Now, what about the speed? Listening speed is a thing. You got to play around with it. And you got to play around with it based on the book you're reading, I think. Too fast and you lose information, too slow and you lose interest. This is not new information. I'm not telling you anything that you've not heard before.

But just notice if something feels off about an audiobook experience, but it's not the story or the narrator. but you're like, man, I just can't, it could be the speed. And finally, how do you find recommendations? I will tell you how I find mine, but I recognize that this could be a hole in your listening experience. So note that if you're like, man, I actually really like audiobooks, but I never know what a

good one is. Maybe you need a place for recommendations. So I get mine pretty much from the same place as I get all my all book recommendations and Bogle of Modern Mrs. Darcy and her. podcast, what should I read next? Jamie Golden's Greenlights on the pop cast. I don't, Knox and I do not have the same reading choices usually. DMs from you guys who are familiar with my reading taste. You know my book words and you send me Rex, which is always so kind. And my sister, those are my main places. Those plus my list of book words make it so that I don't usually listen to duds.

And if there is one, then I'll just quit and I'll get a different book. About three weeks ago, I started, I'm not kidding, I started four different audiobooks over one afternoon. Like nothing was hitting. I just kept returning them to the library on my liby app and like, well, let's do another one. This is not going to work. So try not to get too discouraged if one doesn't work out. There are plenty, plenty of other voices and stories in the metaphorical see. So in summary, if you would like too lazy genius audiobooks in your life, consider what the biggest challenge or desire is. Then walk through those five steps to lazy genius anything and see if something sticks, you know? Name what matters. Get rid of what's in the way. Make sure you have what

you need. Put everything in its place. Feel like yourself and stay in the flow. I highly recommend bookwords like so, so much. And then having really simple ways to make a choice of what you'll listen to. Decide once for the win here. Hopefully some of what I do. Hopefully some of what I do. sparked an idea for you, but ultimately enjoy audiobooks in a way that matters to you, at a rate that matters to you. You don't have to do it the same way that everyone else does it. And it is definitely reading. And I hope it becomes something that you enjoy leaning on more often. And that's how to lazy genius audiobooks. Okay, before we go, let's celebrate the lazy genius of the week. This week, it's Katie Bassett. Katie has a fantastic book-related idea that I'm so

excited for you to hear. So Katie writes this. This past year, we threw a party for my five-year-old daughter because she learned how to read. We decided to throw her a reading celebration on a specific day in the summer. Every year, we plan to have a simple sweet treat. This year, it's banana splits, and give her a few books to enjoy. By choosing a day to celebrate her reading life, we are doing several important things, important to us that matter at once. We are encouraging her in her reading life by celebrating that she is a reader. We're creating a family holiday that is special to us. We're gifting her books on a day that she does not expect toys like birthdays and Christmas. And very conveniently, we scheduled all of this on her half birthday so that we would not ever forget

the date. I wanted to share this because I have a feeling of would be a welcome idea for many families who also feel invested in their kids reading. Holy smokes. Katie, this is the sweetest idea. I can I throw myself a reading celebration day? Like, I want this for myself. This could be for a kid, obviously, but also for anyone. Like, I just think this is so fantastic. And I love how this hits on the things that matter for Katie in a way that feels like, you know, marking a moment without a lot of pressure.

Ideas like this are just such a gem. So thank you for sharing yours, Katie. And congratulations on being the lazy genius of the week. All right, y'all, that is it for today. Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I'm Kendra, and I'll see you next week.

Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life, because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch.

I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.