Why Creating a Personal Podcast Can Help You Study
Did you know you can customize Google to filter out unwanted results? Follow these steps to improve your search results, including adding Lifehacker as your preferred source for tech news .
Memory is a tricky thing. Scientists have calculated how many units of information can be stored in short-term memory (about seven, although there are excellent ways to memorize more ), but if you really want to remember something, you’ll have to repeat it over and over again until it becomes ingrained in your brain.
There are plenty of ways to do this if you have the time to dedicate to review practice. But if you’re preparing for a school exam or a work presentation, you might not have the time to review material over and over again , but you do if you’re creating a personal podcast. This method requires only a single effort, and then you relax and absorb the information more passively, making it ideal for studying or reviewing material when time is tight or you’re busy with other tasks.
How to Create a Podcast That Helps You Learn
The next time you want to remember the details of a study, open the voice memos feature on your phone and create a mini-study podcast. You can also simply read your notes aloud into the microphone; this is the easiest and best option. (If you’re memorizing a speech, just read it all the way through. That’s what I did in high school when I was a forensics geek and felt like using even a single notecard during my presentation would undermine my entire presentation. Regardless, I gained a lot, which I attribute in part to not reading while everyone else was using aids.) However, you have other, more intensive options. You can record individual “episodes” for each mini-topic you’re studying, which will help you organize your thoughts and provide an easy way to focus if you need a refresher in a particular area. Use your favorite note-taking method or a reading and memorization technique like SQ3R to create brief but meaningful outlines covering the most important points to learn, and then write your scripts based on these notes. This part will take some time, but all together, it will help you begin to remember what you need to remember. You don’t need to worry about making it truly enjoyable for others, so make it work for your own learning style. Some approaches you can use include asking yourself test questions out loud, pausing and stating the correct answer, or reading entire passages from your textbook into a microphone. You can even try different characters and turn it into a role-play. However, don’t get too carried away with this unless this kind of creativity helps you focus; it’s better to stick to the facts and simple audio.
The most important thing begins after you’ve recorded your personal podcast: you need to listen to it. Listen to it a lot . Listen to it through your car speakers or headphones on the train to make your commute productive. Listen to it at the grocery store, while doing chores, and while you’re relaxing at night. Fall asleep listening to it. The first few times, you’ll be listening quite actively, but even if it’s just in the background, the information will still be absorbed into your brain.
The second version of your educational podcast
If you’re going to do this, the most important part that makes it valuable is the part where you review the material, outline the text, and speak it out loud into the microphone. This is a significant part of the preparation. However, if you don’t have time for this or are worried about not being able to highlight the most important points if you leave it all to yourself, there’s another, good option.
Google’s NotebookLM is an AI tool that uses only the materials you provide. This means that, unlike competitors like ChatGPT, it doesn’t answer your questions by combing through the entire internet. Instead, it searches PDFs, YouTube videos, links, and other resources you provide—that’s all. One of its coolest features is that it can create “podcasts” for you based on these materials, in addition to the ability to create flashcards and quizzes . These podcasts sound like real ones you might listen to in everyday life: they feature different voices and characters who speak in a conversational but factual tone about the content of what you’ve uploaded to the program. I love NotebookLM and use it constantly to organize my work. It’s free and generates podcasts quickly, so it’s worth considering here.
Why a Personal Learning Podcast Works
Memorizing material from a personal podcast is an example of cramming, a process by which we retain information based on repetition. But it has other benefits, too. For example, even when you’re taking notes and deciding what to include in a mini-podcast, you’re learning—making decisions about which concepts are most important, how they fit together, and how you can present your expertise to others. Even if you choose to entrust it to NotebookLM, you’re still making decisions about which materials from your course or project to upload and how to organize them, which is also learning. Reading is certainly good, but you retain information better when you process it in different ways. From organizing your notes to speaking them out loud to listening to them aloud, each step of this process will help you more thoroughly absorb and recall the material. Each of these methods is typically used on its own as a standalone study method, so imagine how effective they would be together.