How Podcasts Have Changed The Way I Learn.

13/02/2023 - Oxford-ing

Sweathead is just one of the many podcasts I make time to listen to nowadays. I used to spend a lot of time looking at Social Media Platforms, the sole intent of 'just looking at Social Media'. But at the end of the day, I had learned nothing and gained nothing from the experience. It really does make an impact when you find out that you could have been learning about something, anything, anything more than you did, and that's what really got me annoyed about one experience in particular.

I made a promise to myself on the 1st of January, that this year would be a good year, a year of positive changes in who I am as a person, and who I will become with the persistence of learning. Yeah yeah, I know, sounds corny and all but I really did stick to it. I began listening to new podcasts, toning down the amount of time I spent needlessly scrolling on one app, only to get bored and start scrolling on another app, most likely the app I closed because I was bored with the other app. It's become pretty apparent to me that this sort of behaviour isn't just limited to me, I'm pretty sure we all have three apps running on a rotation, I imagine some people were just like me and even moved the app on the phone home screen so that it takes less time to open the phone, then tap again on the app.

I learned pretty early on, on this journey, that just making it a little more difficult to get to an app, or use an app throughout my day, that it actually makes an impressive improvement to my general well-being and quality of life. I learned quicker still that what I want more of is value for time, not value for money.

The accompanying image for this post is of Mark Pollard and his podcast Sweathead, in which he interviews creative thinkers, leaders and strategists from all over the world, to get a better understanding of their experiences and understandings of the everchanging world of Adlands and Marketing.

Mark has a massive collection of podcasts which have a huge variety of scope and discipline, he meets with old work colleagues and makes new connections and offers a load of really interesting and challenging questions to his interviewees. It's a really playful and fun podcast too, and I'd recommend anyone who's interested in learning a bit more about the marketing world, who's involved and how they work, to go ahead and grab a pew as they go down a bunch of different rabbit holes and career paths.

I love listening to the audio whilst doing work and chilling out, as I personally find it a welcoming change to the otherwise quiet, plant-filled rooms I typically find myself working and researching in. I don't feel stressed when I listen to the podcast either, and I think a lot of people appreciate the style of laid-back learning and question proposing. And to add to this, they're not stupidly long formats either which allows you to listen to one within a 30 to 40-minute window, not get bored and actually retain some of the information too.

I've taken this logic to a lot of what I do nowadays, simply limiting engagement times to 30 to 40-minutes, then doing something else for a brief while and switching back, I actually found that if I have three separate tasks to do, the progress for each of them is usually better because my mind is not fully engaged in one thing but constantly open to the tasks information in the background of my mind. This way it allows me to think of new important things for two tasks and quickly write them down, as I work on another.

I know it's only a small change in who I am and what I do, but I can't help but think that such simple changes in how I work and think about information, have made such an incredibly positive improvement. And all I did was prioritise interesting and stimulating information over the drip-fed drivel that Social Media algorithms have to offer, which, by the way, is never really relevant to the things I'm actually curious in. I'm starting to think Social Media algorithms want me to look at things that don't present any emotional or intellectual value, and that they only want us to engage with financially profiteering content. Strange very strange indeed.

TLDR - Podcast's opened a new avenue of positive intellectual engagement, and I think everyone should listen to them whilst doing something else intellectually stimulating instead of sitting around and disengaging with valueless Social Media engagement.