Make 'Em Portable
Many podcasts can be listened to on the web (and therefore through
your computer), but if you’re having trouble levering them into your routine,
your best bet is to make podcasts as portable as possible. Find you a
podcatcher (the app that will let you download, listen, and subscribe to
podcasts--Google “podcatcher recs” and find the one that is right for you and
your device) for your phone. Great! Now you have access to your podcasts pretty
much anywhere. How you get the soundwaves into your earballs is the next step.
I honestly just turn the sound up decently high on my phone and put my phone in
my back pocket, speaker up. The phone (and the podcast) go with me wherever I
go as I’m going about household things, and I can hear perfectly well over
everything except the vacuum cleaner. Headphones are also an option (maybe a
wireless pair if you could join me in the Impossibly Tangled Up in My Headphone
Wires Club), especially if you need to be considerate of other humans sharing
your space. Should you just need bigger sound than your phone can produce, there
are any number of small, portable, affordable Bluetooth speakers on the market
that can help you with that. Bottom line is: make it easy for you to take your
podcasts anywhere and hear them wherever you go. Then you can start slotting
them into your routine whenever you have the chance.
Make Car Time Fly
If you can connect your phone
to your car’s stereo system through Bluetooth, it’s easy to listen to podcasts
in the car. Turn your commute into your favorite time of day by catching up
with your favorite podcasts while you get all the places you need to be.
Listen Whenever Your Ears Are Free
Remember Mary Poppins’s spoonful of sugar and how it helped the medicine
go down? Podcasts are the sugar that helps me get the chores done. Cooking?
Dishes? Cleaning? Bill paying? Laundry folding? Organizing books? All a little
more fun with the latest episode of my favorite podcast playing in the
background. They help the time pass, and if you’re like me, the carrot of the
podcast might actually help you get to some chores you’d otherwise let slide. Think
outside the box here, too. Maybe listen in the shower. (If I turn the volume up
all the way and put the phone down on the shelf just outside the shower, I can
hear just fine unless my actual ears are completely under the actual stream of
water. Probably there are more high-tech, water proofy ways to accomplish this
too.) Listen when you take the dog out. (I listened to the entire backlog of a
podcast by turning it on every time I took our new puppy out last summer.) Listen
while you get ready for bed. (A nice, soothing podcast helps me wind down as I
do the handful of small things that have to happen before lights out—checking the
front door is locked, giving the cat fresh water, turning on the dishwasher, brushing
my teeth, etc.)
Make Them an Excuse to Do a Handsy Thing
Do you have a knitting project languishing in your basket? Is your
sewing machine gathering dust? Is there a half-assembled model ship in your
basement? Podcasts are excellent “background” for any kind of project you do
with your hands, especially if you’re like me and the constant changing of
focus if you try to watch TV while doing handwork gives you a headache.
Sweat!
If you’re exercising already, consider listening to a podcast
while you do it. Cycle them in with your music or audiobooks. If you aren’t
exercising already, use the podcasts as a bribe to get yourself to do it. Walk
around the block until you’ve got through a whole episode. Voilà! Thirty
minutes or an hour of exercise under your belt!
Listen with a Buddy or a Boo
Pick a podcast that you’d enjoy with a good friend or your
significant other and make listening to it a date. Make an event out of it—have
a living room picnic or snuggle on the couch or listen on the way to a favorite
restaurant and then discuss the ep over your favorite meal together.
Give Yourself Permission to Do Nothing Else for a Few Minutes a
Day
You work too hard. (Oh yes you do.) Take fifteen minutes for
yourself. Shut the door. Sit down. Put your feet up. Do nothing else but
listen. Ahhhh. And remember: you don’t have to listen to a whole podcast episode
in one go. Your catcher will remember your place. If you only have fifteen
minutes, just listen for fifteen minutes. Catch the rest of it next time.
All right, what are you waiting for? Go forth and listen to your
heart’s content!
