Our culture is obsessed with productivity. It’s not enough to do one thing at a given time. If we’re doing something that doesn’t require 100% focus and attention, then we must listen to something on the side, so as to maximize the productivity we can wring out of each moment.

If we don’t do it, we feel like a luddite loser who can’t keep up with the times. This has given rise to two new mediums of fiction and non-fiction storytelling: the podcast, and the audiobook.

I have tried to listen to podcasts while I work and what I’ve found is that I’m either missing what’s being said in the podcast or I’m messing up what I’m working on. At least for me, personally, I just can’t do multitasking.

I’ve also tried to listen to music while I work, but if the music has lyrics, the same thing happens. If it’s instrumental music, then I can work, because the music just fades into the background and acts as a white noise machine. Which is not a bad thing at all for your work, but I wouldn’t then say that I’ve listened to this or that band or artist. I’ll say that I use music as a white noise machine.

And when it comes to audiobooks, my rant-o-matic starts to hum. I refuse to believe that anyone can “read” a book by listening to an audiobook. A podcast is still two people having an impromptu conversation and you can keep up with it even if your attention fades in and out a little bit. But a book, especially a good book, is written in very precise sentences. When I’m reading an actual book, I often feel the desire to go back and read the previous sentence. Or, if I put the book down for a whle, I like to come back and start from a few paragraphs back. Sometimes, I need to refer the dictionary to understand the meaning of a word. None of this is easy, or in some cases even possible, to do with an audiobook.

On top of all this, it’s so much harder to pay attention using your ears instead of your eyes. Neuroscientists will tell you that our attention follows our eyes. If you want to focus on something, you have to literally focus your eyes on it. The only way I can focus on an audiobook, is by closing my eyes.

Audiobooks are a far inferior medium than a printed book, or even a video where the text of the book is displayed as the narration goes on.

The only reason they are successful is because of our 21st century need to show off and boast about how many books we’ve “read”. We don’t really care what’s in the book. We don’t want to understand the subject, or gain anything of value from a book. We don’t even remember what a book said, a week after “reading” it.

All we want to do is check off the book from our list. We can then make a post on Instagram about how many books we’ve read this year.

If you’ve gone through a 3 hour recording of someone narrating a book, you haven’t read the book, the narrator has read the book. You just listened in.