Embracing Change

Perspective Shifts

A Simple Trick To Power Through More Podcasts In Less Time

Want to make a better podcast? Listen to a lot of podcasts that are better than yours. Here’s a simple technique that will make you a more productive podcast listener without monopolizing your time.

October 1, 2020

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I hear from a lot of podcasters who want their shows to grow or who want their show to improve. But all too often, these same podcasters only listen to a tiny number of podcasts, if any. And it’s embarrassing how many of them don’t even listen to their own episodes. Oof.

Every one of them knows that the only way to get better is to study (or at least pay attention to) those who are doing something better than they are. Podcasting is no different. If you want to make a show worthy of growth, you have to listen to lots of different podcasts. Yes, podcasts in the same category/genre as yours. But also plenty of other podcasts exploring content, topics, approaches, and techniques that may not even make sense for your show. You need exposure to inspiring podcast content if you want to make an inspiring podcast of your own.

But almost to a person, these podcasters cite the same barrier to them listening more: time. None of us have an abundance of time. There are only 24 hours in everyone’s day (at least on this planet). But I have a technique that lets me be an active consumer of over 100 podcasts. 114, to be exact.

This technique doesn’t require you to listen at 2x speed.

This technique doesn’t require you to change your preferred podcast listening app.

And most importantly, this technique is “non-destructive”, so if it doesn’t work for you, you can go back to the way things were in a matter of seconds. You will not lose a single episode or subscription, I promise.

Start By Classifying Your Podcast Subscriptions Into Two Groups

Before I take you through the easy tactic, I need you to think about your current podcast subscriptions from a high level, mentally sorting shows into one of two groups.

The first group is made up of all the podcasts you listen to that require sequential consumption. Shows that tell a story or present content that builds on the episode that came before. Podcast fiction fits here, as you wouldn’t start the 17th episode if you’ve still haven’t listened to the 5th episode. There is content in those dozen other episodes you really need to catch up with the story.

The same goes for educational podcasts where each episode is a lesson that builds on the prior episodes (lessons). Journalistic deep-dives that present their findings over the course of five or 15 episodes to give you the full picture go into this bucket as well.

The second group is… well, everything else. And I literally mean every other podcast you listen to where sequential listening is not required. That’s probably most of your podcast subscriptions because most podcast episodes do not require sequential listening.

Before I talk about what to do with those two classes of shows, I need to take you on vacation. Or better said, I need you to picture coming back home from an extended three-week vacation abroad without your phone or computer.

When you get home, you find your physical mailbox is overflowing with junk mail, bills, and periodicals. No reasonable person goes through each item sequentially and methodically. That way lies madness! Instead, you triage the pile, tossing out a lot, saving the things that need attention, and deciding what to do with three weeks of daily or weekly magazines or other periodicals. And chances are, you prioritize reading the most recent periodical first, setting the rest aside for later consumption, if at all.

You’ve missed a lot of TV too, so you prioritize that as well. For shows that are actual series, you find time to binge-watch the episodes you missed before you catch the newest. But you certainly don’t do that for news programs or other more episodic content. For those, you just pick up where they are and ignore the content you missed.

If you're subscribed to some YouTube channels you're probably not going to try to watch all the videos you missed. You’re going to clear that notification and, like TV before, just start watching again from here.

You don’t even try to catch up on all the Tweets, IG posts, TikTok videos, or whatever other social content you swim in every day. You might have a few key people you’ll try to catch up on, but for the vast majority, you let the algorithm do its job, knowing you can always scroll backward on a particular feed or thread if it’s required, which it only rarely is.

Ok. Metaphor fully exhausted. Let’s continue.

Create A New Station/Playlist/Channel/Filter In Your Podcast Listening App For Everything Else

For now, we’re going to touch your must-be-consumed-sequentially podcast subscriptions. No matter how important they are. Leave them as they were. Instead, we’re going to separate out everything else by creating a brand new station/playlist/channel/filter or whatever word your app uses.

Call that new station (Apple Podcasts calls these lists Stations, so that’s what I’m going to call them from here on out, so adjust accordingly to whatever your podcast listening app calls them) in your podcast listening app. Mine is called “Main”, but you can call yours Susan if it makes you happy.

And now, add every subscription of yours to it other than the sequential-required content. But with two caveats:

1. Only Include Most The Recent Episodes

Go into the settings of the station and tweak it so that this station only includes the most recent episode of the podcasts you’ve added to it. Even if the podcast produces daily episodes, Evo? Yes, even if the podcast produces daily podcasts. What if the podcast releases sporadically or might be podfaded, Evo? You still set this station to display the most recent episode only.

Remember: this station is just a filter or logical grouping of your content. It’s a specialized view into some of the episodes from some of the shows you are subscribed to. You’re not losing anything.

2. Sort The List From Newest To Oldest

You’re making this new station so you can be more efficient in your podcast listening so that you can power through more episodes in less time. You have neither the time nor the bandwidth to individually triage each episode that drops on your phone. You have neither the time nor the bandwidth to assign “importance” individually to each episode that drops on your phone. You need to trust the system to do this, and the best system is to always have newer episodes push down the episodes you haven’t listened to yet. Or didn’t finish listening to. I know that sounds really strange, but I promise it will work if you’ll let it.

Now you’ve got a lovely new station called Main (or Susan), and it’s going to be your go-to spot when you’re ready to listen, either first thing in the morning (like I do) or when you’re doing a “found time” activity, snatching listening time when you can.

Care And Feeding Of Your Prioritized Podcast Listening List

My Main station has 38 different subscriptions in it, but only seven episodes right now. There were nine, but I already listened to two this morning. I might catch up with all of them today, or I may not. New content will show up throughout the day, as I subscribe to a few daily shows. More will show up tonight while I’m sleeping.

Yes, a new episode of a show - particularly the daily shows - may replace an older episode in this view. That’s OK, because the “missing” episode isn’t missing. It’s just not displayed in this view. If I want, I can always go to that show and see the full list of episodes, even those that don’t show up on my Main station.

The power of this Main station is in the automatic prioritization, with a deference towards recency and urgency. It forces me to see new and varied content. It also artificially limits my choices, which is great for when I don’t want to make hard choices. Which is most of the time. I do enough of that as it is.

If an episode keeps getting pushed further and further down the list, or maybe keeps getting replaced with a new episode before I can listen, it probably means that show isn’t all that important to me. Or maybe it’s a show that I only want to consume at a certain time when I can deeply connect with the content. If so, it probably shouldn’t be in the Main station and needs special treatment.

If the Main station is empty - which has happened - it means I have room for more content! So I seek out new podcasts and add them to this Station. It’s important to be exposed to new podcasts all the time. I find this a great way to make that happen on a regular basis, without feeling like I’m neglecting the shows I’m currently subscribed to.

You, on the other hand, may forego the victory lap and check out the episodes of shows you missed. Hey, you have time now that your triage queue is clean, right? I usually reserve Sunday for the deeper dives, but like all things in life, YMMV

However you use it, this simple trick should help you power through more podcasts in less time. Let me know how it works for you!

Please visit BuyMeACoffee.com/EvoTerra if you liked this uncharacteristic how-to episode or if you like the deep philosophical dives that typically are an edition of Podcast Pontifications. (Yes, this show should totally be in your Main queue!)

Also, please tell one other podcasting friend about Podcast Pontifications. The show only grows by word of mouth from one working podcaster to another.

I'll be back on Tuesday of next week with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

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Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra. He’s on a mission to make podcasting better. Allie Press proofed the copy, corrected the transcript, and edited the video. Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media.

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PPS3E42 A Simple Trick To Power Through More Podcasts In Less Time - Transcript

[00:00:00] Want to make a better podcast, listen to a lot of podcasts that are better than yours. Here's a simple technique that will make you a more productive podcast listener without monopolizing your time.

hello and welcome to another podcast. Pontifications with me, Evo, Tara. I am constantly amazed. The number of podcasters who wants their show to [00:00:30] grow or who want their show to improve, but they themselves don't listen to podcasts or if they do, it's a tiny, like single digit number of podcasts, that's not going to cut it.

That's not going to cut it. If you want to get better and you want your show to improve, you have to listen to lots of different podcast. Yes. The podcasts that are in your particular genre or field, but also lots of other, Oh, [00:01:00] lots of other podcasts doing lots of other weird things that may not even make sense to you.

So that means you've got to find time to listen to all of those. And when is that going to happen? Evo? It's not like I have a monopoly on a monopoly. It's not like I have an abundance of time. None of us do. We have 24 hours a day. We live in a time scarce world. So today I'm going to do one of those rare how two episodes of podcast pontification to tell you exactly how I managed to get through [00:01:30] 114 different podcasts.

I am subscribed to. Not a made up number. Just looked on the app before I got here. This trick by the way, has nothing to do with increasing the speed at which you listened to shows. Look, that's your preference, whatever speed you want to listen to one and a half double time 0.5, normal fine. Knock yourself out.

It will also work on just about, he said with an asterisk, any podcast listening app, [00:02:00] they should all do what I'm going to tell you about right now. This isn't a specialized trick. It may be called something different, but you should be able to do this with whatever a dedicated podcast listening app you are utilizing.

Okay. So here's what we're going to do. Oh, and one more thing, one more key thing about this technique. This is non destructive. You are not going to lose any content. So even if you try this and it fails miserably, [00:02:30] you will not have any rework to do. You will not have lost a single episode. Everything is still in your library as it was before.

I'm not suggesting making that fundamental of a change. This is just a filtering change, so let's get into it. So the first thing you gotta do. Go through your podcast list and swell in your head. Don't actually go through the list of shows you're subscribed to on your app, but first figure out and separate classify.

If [00:03:00] you will, the shows you listen to in one of two different groups, a group number one is comprised of. Episodes of shows that must be listened to sequentially. So I'm thinking about podcast fiction and audio drama, obviously. Look, you don't want to listen to chapter 17. If you haven't listen to chapters five through 16, right.

That makes no sense to start in the middle. Also [00:03:30] educational content. If you're trying to learn about something, maybe it's a history show. Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's truly education based where you are listening also, where sequence matters. You can't really just bounce around. That's one journalistic deep dives, where they go over a five or 15 episode arc to tell complete story.

Okay. Those need to be listened to sequentially. So think about them as one group and in the other group is everything else. I mean, really [00:04:00] everything else. And that's what we're going to do a way to start thinking about that outside of podcasting is this pretend you we've just been on vacation for three weeks somewhere and you come back home.

When you open up your mailbox, if you didn't get the post office to stop sending you mail, or even if you do, and they resume mail, you're going to get a lot of mail all at once, and you're going to troubleshoot, not troubleshoot. You're going to triage all that content and toss a lot. Right? A lot of the things that come in the mail you don't need, I don't know.

You're going to triage and only save the things [00:04:30] that you do. Okay. That's one thing for real world. The thing is thinking about the magazines and newsletters that have piled up while you've been gone. You're going to prioritize them, right. You're not going to start from the most, the, the first episode or the first, uh, edition of a magazine you got, if it comes out on a weekly basis and read three before you get there.

No, probably not. Or if you do, you're going to prioritize to do that stuff later. Same thing. Come back from watching TV. You're binge watching the series that you are like wanting to obviously to get caught up on, but not [00:05:00] news programs. You just start with the most recent one, right? Okay. All right. I'm getting there.

Trust me, getting back to podcasting in a second. This is part of the reason why social media uses algorithms, because you really can't catch up on everything. If you're watching YouTube videos and you've been away for three weeks and you've been ignoring that little notification, you're not going to start from the scratch.

You're going to start from where you get what I'm saying, right. Of course, you wouldn't do that with books and movies. If the third F third series or the third movie in the series comes out and you haven't watched two, you're not gonna watch three. You're gonna watch two first. That's why we [00:05:30] have all these subscription services, write books.

If you're brand new to a series and it's on book six, you're not going to start a book six. You're going to start with one, two, then work your way up. Right. I mean, that's just the way we think about it. Right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. Here's what we're gonna do once we got this classifications made, right?

So. You're going to make a brand new playlist or a station or a channel or whatever it happens to be called in your app. Go look for it. I'm going to making a new one. And in that new channel [00:06:00] group station, playlist, whatever, you're going to add, the everything else, stuff not. The things you want, you have to listen to sequentially, but the everything else you're going to make a list for that.

You're going to add every podcast. That's not sequential into that list. And here's the trick. You're only going to include the most recent episode in that station or playlist. I remember all your episodes are still better, but for this view, [00:06:30] this playlist only include the most recent episode. Okay. And then part two, sort that, so that the most recent episode of all the episodes you have will be on the top.

So the first thing that's listed is the most recent episode things you haven't listened to yet. What can we do to back down and down and down? Now I do this. I have 38 different shows in this category. I call it main in my [00:07:00] stations. That's what I'm utilizing. There are 38 shows in there and I've been doing this for weeks now.

And right now, my queue has seven episodes in it. That's it? Seven episodes. And I'll be caught up on those all throughout the day. It had eight before I listened to one this morning, but throughout the day before tonight, I'll probably catch through all those. And if I don't no worries, that might mean that if I miss a show for a week, I'm only gonna see one.

I'm going to say the most recent episode and that's okay. Part of the trick here. [00:07:30] Part of the trick here is monitoring the situation. Oh, and by the way, if, if I do, if I do miss an episode in my main feed, it's, it's not gone. I can go to that specific podcast in my feed and see all the episodes that I've missed.

Or if I want to back up and catch up, I can do that. But in this main feed, in this main section, this, this, this station I'm listening to only the most recent stuff. It's where I prioritize my listening. And I found out by doing this, that some, I keep [00:08:00] skipping week after week. And if that's the case, well, maybe that show's not all that important to me, or it could be that.

And in some cases it's been where I shouldn't have put that show in there. It actually was sequential. I just wasn't thinking about it properly. So I moved it out because it's not really helpful when I've got time to sit and think and listen, and really dissolve, nerdy and engage in a content. That's when I go listen to the, not in this main feed stuff.

Right. That's the way it is. And off, I also have ran out of shows from this [00:08:30] feed, what I go find new ones and I put it in here and see if they actually work. And I keep it. Managed look it's really helped me power through a lot more shows. I'm consuming a lot more content. Hopefully it's as something you can easily implement today because it's, it's good to power through more podcasts in less time.

It's good to be exposed to new ideas and thoughts out there. So hope you got a lot out of that. I also hope you will visit buy me a coffee.com/evo Terra. If you liked this [00:09:00] advice and you like the deep philosophical dives I do go on on a regular basis. Oh yes. By the way, this show should totally be in your main queue.

You can catch up on the back stuff whenever you want. That's perfectly fine. So buy me a coffee.com/e Tara, and also tell one other podcasting friend about podcast. Pontifications the show only grows by your word of mouth to other podcasters, you know, so please share with them, enjoy the rest of your Thursday.

No episodes from me on Friday. So also enjoy your weekend. I've got something scheduled on Monday, [00:09:30] so I'll be back on Tuesday. Holy cow. That was alive for another podcast. Pontifications cheers.

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