Madeline
If you talked to me a year ago, I would have, without fail, mentioned something I heard about in a podcast. I would have no shame reciting antidotes and the “facts” that came along with them. But slowly, the love of books and audiobooks have captured my ears and, unfortunately, has pushed out podcasts. That paired with a busy work and school balance, I cannot find the time to listen to my podcasts.
What I Use to Do
Any time anyone suggested a podcast, I would subscribe. Any time I was fascinated by a new topic, I would immediately find a podcast and subscribe. By the time I had been listening to podcasts for about five years, I was subscribed to hundreds of them. And on top of that, I would add each and everyone to my playlist, leaving my queue to be a hundred or more hours and I cannot find the time to listen to that many hours of Podcasts.
What I Tried Doing
I realized I needed a method to reduce what I listen to. What I found was that some podcasts I really enjoyed, some podcasts were hit or miss and some, although I liked the topic, the people were boring or the audio quality was so bad I would zone out. This was a starting point to solve the problem that I cannot find the time to listen to all the podcasts I subscribed to.
So, I started being picky about my podcasts. I would unsubscribe to the ones that never or rarely held my attention and was very specific on which episodes of specific podcasts I would listen to. For example, on Stuff You Should Know, does a podcast on a place I’ve never heard of, “Lake Peigneur” interest me? Nope! But does “How California Got Its Name”, the state that I was born, raised, and have never moved out of interest me? It sure does!
The problem was, I’m still too interested in too many topics. I want to know everything from marketing my blog, to understanding web design for school, to entertaining podcasts like, Armchair Expert. I was finding I cannot find the time to listen to everything I was interested in.
What I Do Now
I’m tight on what I listen to. I ask myself, am I really interested in this topic? If the answer is “no”, it gets deleted and no questions asked. If the answer is “sure”, I ask myself “Do I really really want to listen to this?” Half the time the answer is not really.
I also limit myself to the hours of backlog I allow myself. I’m only allowed 12 hours of backlog. This limit helps me stay on track and listening to current events rather than something that happened a month ago that is old news. I still don’t have the system down perfect, but I at least get to listen to the podcasts I want.
