Losing yourself in an audiobook

I’ve been listening to a lot of audiobooks recently, so on the principle that anything worth doing is worth paying attention to, I thought I’d write a bit about what that’s like.

Partly, this is interesting because I’ve previously failed to get into audiobooks at all, but in the last couple of months they’ve become a big part of my life. This isn’t entirely a positive, although I think where it’s negative it’s more a symptom than a cause of of problems.

This post is mostly paid, but before we get into the more personal sections, here’s a spell for you:

Bedtime Story

When trying to fall asleep, if you’re struggling to calm down, or have a thought loop going on, put on an audiobook to listen to and listen to it for as long as you want.

A good choice of audiobook for this is:

1. Fiction. Probably some choices of nonfiction work well for this too, but I’ve not explored this much yet.

2. A familiar story - Ideally one I've actually read before, but if not a familiar and unchallenging genre.

3. Familiar narrator.¹

4. Not that good. Royal Road /Kindle Unlimited level quality is often ideal. This matters less when you’re rereading than when you’re reading something for the first time.

5. "Basic" narration. Radio plays, books with sound effects, etc. are very bad for this. e.g. I was listening to the Peter Whimsey radio plays

Put the audiobook on on a timer for half an hour,² and then lie in bed with your eyes closed and maybe a sleep mask on. If you don’t fall asleep before the timer finishes, just extend it.

If you wake up in the middle of the night, just put the audiobook back on.

Because I side sleep, especially while trying to fall asleep, I’ll typically use a single earbud from my airpods while doing this, and swap it between ears if I shift about, but use whatever sleep setup works for you for this. If you’re sleeping alone you can even use it on speaker mode.

This has significantly improved my sleep reliability. It’s much better for falling asleep to than reading a book, because you’re able to drift off while it’s still going on, while with actual reading you need to maintain focus.

I'm possibly slightly too dependent on it, which is one of the downsides, I’m going to talk about in the paid sections, but that’s still a lot better than struggling to sleep, and even on nights where I can’t sleep I’m a lot less frustrated because I’ve got a good (or, at least, enjoyable) book to listen to while I fail to sleep.