The Problem with Podcasts
Is our fascination with efficient content consumption actually adding stress to our lives and impairing our decision-making?
Is our fascination with efficient content consumption actually adding stress to our lives and impairing our decision-making?
I love podcasts. I listen to a lot of them. I even host one. I’ve bought into the concept of the audio content revolution — hook, line and sinker. You know the story well: podcasts provide a passive way to consume content; they’re perfect for all of those times when our hands are occupied but our brains are not — when we’re driving, on the subway or even working out. Between email, social media, books and the web, we’ve already got way too much to read; podcasts provide a much needed alternative.
But is it possible to have too much of this undoubtedly good thing?
The proliferation of podcasts has occurred at a breakneck speed in just the last five years. We’ve quickly gone from: “It’s called Serial? And it’s free?”… to feelings of inadequacy when we shamefully admit to our cocktail party conversation mate that, no, we have not, in fact, yet listened to Michael Lewis’s new show.
For all of their many benefits, podcasts are becoming another stressor in our lives.
By their nature, podcasts take time to consume — and time is what many of us find ourselves lacking most. The fact that their sheer number seems to grow exponentially by the day only further exacerbates the problem. What books were five years ago — when the self-published movement had firmly taken hold — podcasts are now. Every b-list celebrity, author and self-help guru has one. It’s gone from “check out my blog,” to “check out my book,” to “check out my podcast.”
And while many of these shows are absolutely worth our time, we obviously have only a limited amount of it; most of us can consume one or possibly two shows per day, depending on length — but no more.
Yet, we humans aren’t very good at knowing when enough is enough. We subscribe to every new series that catches our eye or that our friends deem a must-listen. Before we know it, we’re overloaded. Our podcast queues start to resemble those Yahoo! and Hotmail email accounts we abandoned long ago as the relentless barrage of messages to the decades-old accounts finally overwhelmed us.
And the stress of keeping up with another medium is just one small part of the equation. The bigger problem is one that may be less obvious. Question: Before podcasts came into your life, what were you doing with that time? For many of us, especially in the pre-AirPods era, this time was not necessarily “audio content” time. It was running time. Or commuting time. Or weight-lifting time. Or if we were consuming content, it likely was music.
But now it’s different. It’s someone else’s voice in our ears. And, yes, they are often smart, considered, passionate voices, giving us information that we want to have. And that’s great. But they are not our own voices. They are not our own thoughts. And that is the problem.
It’s beyond critical to have downtime. Time to think. Time when we are neither creating nor consuming content. Time when we are just being. Just driving. Just walking. Just riding the subway.
Because this is when ideas happen. This is when connections are made. This is when conversations are replayed or previewed. And while we hear every day about how we need to be mindful and stay in the present, we also need time to process what has already happened, and to think about the future. Some of this thinking is conscious. But some of it, and perhaps the lion’s share of it — is unconscious. It’s the connection that’s made between two seemingly disparate parts of our lives as we “mindlessly” sing along to the words of the song we’ve heard a thousand times before.
There is a reason why many of us find that our best ideas come to us in the shower or while brushing our teeth. It’s because our hands are occupied but our brains are not. Our thoughts are free to roam. To go where they need to go — whether we realize it or not. But increasingly, podcasts are encroaching on this time. And, in some ways, we may be worse off for it. We risk failing to give our brains the downtime they need. As a result, valuable connections don’t happen. Our thinking and judgement can become impaired. And ultimately, we make worse decisions. It’s ironic because this is the exact opposite of what we may be aiming for by listening to the podcast in the first place.
But all is not lost, there are practical ways for us to get the most out of podcasts while keeping our stress under control and our critical thinking intact. Here are a few:
Clean up your podcast subscription list once a month. The ‘yoga-guru-marathon-author-guy’ show sounded like a great idea at first, but if you weren’t quite vibing with the 3.5 hour long monologues, do yourself a favor: kill it from your list.
Give yourself time to think. Maybe it’s music on your ride home from work instead of a podcast. Or it could be filling that lunchtime walk with your own thoughts rather than someone else’s. But if the only time when you’re not consuming information is in the shower, chances are that you’re not giving your brain the unstructured time it needs to function optimally.
Be okay with not catching everything. We don’t see everything on the internet. Social media has long ago expanded beyond any one person’s ability to keep up with everything. Podcasts are the same. Don’t stress over what you’re missing but rather aim to be selective with what you do consume. Curators like Podcast Notes have already popped up to help with this problem.
I don’t mean to pour cold water on the podcast craze. I really do love it and what I’ve learned listening to podcasts has improved my life in countless ways. I just think we need to be smart about our consumption habits and make sure we control them rather than the other way around.
Anyhow, anyone heard any good podcasts lately?
Greg Campion is an author, marketer and storyteller. Find his latest writing at gregcampion.com or follow him on Twitter @gregorycampion.