Bridging the Attention Gap: How Audiobooks Help You Become a Better Reader
Fleeting tweets. Click-bait headlines. Social media feeds engineered to suck your soul.
It sure seems like attention spans are shorter (and more vulnerable) than ever before. And it doesn’t help that we’re trapped in an attention economy where a subliminal message is screaming at us at every turn: “No, Roddy, you are the product!”
Our focus is being hijacked every second of every minute.
Why the hell do you think we’re always so exhausted? It’s certainly not due to a caffeine deficiency, not since we saw that Dunkin’ IV drip promoted by an Instagram influencer that we ordered with Prime Same-Day Shipping.
And what is the result of this relentless, endless attack on our focus, our attention, our very ability to cognitively process the world around us?
“Oh, I would totally read that book. If I could even sit down and read. Oh well, I guess I’ll just scroll for another three hours and then pass out with my phone glued to my hand.”
“I’m just not a reader.”
“Reading is boring.”
“But the movie tells the same story in a tight 90!”
Reading is a beautifully unique form of entertainment. It’s a collaboration of imagination: what starts in an author’s head is completed in the reader’s. In movies and television, the audience is a passive participant—everything you need to enjoy the show is laid out across the screen! But with books, your brain has to cognitively process the words on the page, and your imagination has to get fired up to paint vivid pictures and fill in colorful details.
Look, it’s no mystery that people who are good at reading all share the same brain-numbingly-dumb trait: they read. A lot.
The process of reading is just like any other muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it becomes. Conversely, the less you use it, the faster it atrophies.
So to become a better reader, you must treat reading like you’re training to run a marathon. You wouldn’t throw on some shoes and run 26.2 miles on the first day ... you’d build up to it.
You would work on your endurance.
You would build your strength.
So let’s do that with reading. Let’s set aside “Moby Dick” and instead warm up with “Don’t Be A Monster, Dick!”
Let’s prioritize shorter, fast-paced stories intentionally written to bridge that infernal attention gap.
Let’s whip out our secret weapon—audiobooks—and supercharge our quest to become better readers by engaging our auditory senses and luring ourselves into the captivating world of literature without overwhelming our attention-deprived brains.
Welcome to TubeBooks.
Let’s get reading.
