As a self confessed technology and self improvement geek – I have a few folks in my life that I bounce ideas off of on both these points. When I find something that works, I have historically shared it only with those that have expressed interest in such things. I’ve restricted my recommendations historically as I think it is annoying to other person that I’m babbling to about the latest productivity app – if they are not open to it. Similarly, if you could give two shits about my latest app – I’m prone to not share it.
That has been my historical stance, as there is already too much noise out there for all of us to have yet another voice trying to push something onto you. Another learning from writing these posts in the past few weeks is that people are dying for some sort of edge and tips. There are many that are in dire need of just some basic automation that can help them power through their day, let alone transform their lives. I’ll be sharing some of these apps and real world techniques here in the coming weeks as well.
I recently wrote about 3 currencies and how we continue to trade our energy, time, and money as we go through life. There are a variety of factors that can help you become more efficient with your usage of each of these currencies. I believe increasing your knowledge is a key transformation lever that can be exploited to harness more energy, money, and time – it can unlock so much.
I have two targeted applications that can help you become more knowledgeable. Once you have your knowledge snowball rolling, there’s a good chance you’ll arrive at some wisdom as you apply these things into your life.
I am a big – BIG – believer in lifelong learning and continuing each day to learn one thing. Someday soon, I’ll talk about my 4 daily habits/goals that I have. I’ll share one with you now explicitly – I have a goal each day to improve myself by learning at least one thing. Many days it is via podcast or via an audio hack I’m about to show you – as things are generally quite busy for me.
I love audio as I can typically multitask while listening to something. Now, when I invoke the audio / podcast hacks I”m about to share with you – I am focused on the listening. This means that I am possibly taking notes into my Evernote as the podcast is rolling, and at the very least I am taking notes of points in the podcast where I need to return to harvest the salient points.
I typically do the audio hacks when:
- I’m in the car by myself
- I’m doing cardio (by far my favorite time to do this)
- I’m doing chores around the house
- I’m on the plane in the moment from when I get on the seat until I take my ritualized 20 minute catnap while we take off
- I’m on the rental car bus at the airport while on a trip
These are usually dead zones and I’m unable to do much else – so I gobble up content and learn while on the fly.
I am sharing these two apps given a number of questions recently that were slung my way asking where I’m finding all of this time…
Podcast Player – Overcast
This app has been among the biggest transformational things I have done in the past year. Yeah, that’s a big statement, because I have done a bunch of shit in the past year to improve all over the place.
You can get all of the podcasts you can get with the default Apple app, so same content networks all play with this app.
There are two kickass features – one is the accelerator – you can listen to a podcast anywhere from 75% to 60% of the time depending upon the podcast. Gary Vee’s podcast is pictured here – he’s a fast talking son of gun from NY/NJ – so I downgraded the speed setting on this screen shot. Other podcasts I’ll jam up to 40% on the acceleration.
Also the Voice Boost feature makes this acceleration easier to follow.
Couple these two things together and it is as if you are sitting in the chair like Neo in the Matrix – quicker download/uptake gig right there. If you are somehow not familiar The Matrix movies, stop reading this and go watch the first one. There is more truth in those movies than many realize.
Second app is more recent and I’m still playing with this…
Voice Dream – This thing is just crazy. It will take any printed resource like a PDF or word document you pull down to you phone, a website, or a singular URL, and render it via audio. You can even get it talking to you in a variety of accents…
In that screen shot above, you can see a partial listing of my Pocket app (another Godsend type of app) backlog of reading. All of these articles are text, however in this app – they are ready to be listened to just like a podcast. Bad ass eh?
A buddy of mine suggested that I start up a podcast, and I’m toying with the idea. If you use this app, you can transform any website – including this blog into an audio slice that you can read on the fly.
The best part of this – much like Overcast is that you can download these things to your device for offline listening like when you are stuck on a plane or without wifi for some strange reason.
There you go, two strong apps to help you learn something today in a very straightforward and efficient manner. Hit me up if you want some further hacks on how to actually configure these things.