Podcasts and drive time
Saturday, 3 May, 2014 — practice development podcasts
I have a roughly 20 to 25 minute commute five days a week from our house in North Raleigh to NC State’s Centennial Campus. Most days, I use the drive time to listen to a podcast.
I have two must listen podcasts every week:
There are two other, more technical, podcasts that I also listen to and cycle in every couple of weeks:
I have about 3 1/3 to 4 hours of otherwise lost time each week driving. I use that time to listen to these podcasts for two related reasons.
First, I do not have a better time to listen to these podcasts, largely because of how my sense of time and focus work. All four of these podcasts demand my full attention. I could not be successful in listening to these podcasts and trying to program or read attentively. I use music in those instances. I can, however, focus well on the task of driving, and pay attention to the podcast fairly well.
Second, all four of these podcasts feature smart people in their respective crafts thinking out loud. I, in turn, find myself thinking as a result and drive time is time I am not otherwise trying to focus creative attention elsewhere.
Each of these four podcasts is worth a post of it’s own, which will come in due time. I am, however, capped at these four. There are weeks that I can listen to only one full and part of another episode, depending on episode length. There are weeks where I really need to listen to music for a day or two. While there are many other great podcasts around that I would love to also listen to, I listen to these four at most because that’s as much as I can stay reasonably close to caught up with given how much time I’m willing to spend on it.
This is one of my established daily practices.