I Cut Back On My Podcast Listening

Two or three months ago, I unsubscribed to most of the podcasts that I listened to. At the time I was subscribed to like 50 or 60 podcasts. I normally had 10 episodes lined up. If I was bored. I'd look at my podcast feed to see if there's anything new that I wanted to listen to. 

I realized that podcasts were requiring too much of my attention. I listened to them while I worked in the garden, while I rode in the car, while I did the dishes, and while I worked out. I started listening to podcasts when I got a smartphone to have something to listen to in the car and when mowing. I rationalized it that I was gathering illustrations for preaching and teaching. There was no down time, though, for silence or for listening to audiobooks, the Bible, or music. I realized that I needed to cut back.

I unsubscribed to almost everything. I kept some soccer podcasts. It made looking at my podcast app much less interesting. It also meant there was a lot less that I felt was urgent or important to listen to. 

After a while, I realized that there were some podcasts that I missed and so I started by checking those feeds and downloading an episode that was interesting. Then I added back in a handful of more podcasts that I still wanted to keep up with. It was a good strategy to unsubscribe and then go re-subscribe a few weeks later to things that I realized that I missed.

I also made a wallpaper for my phone that had a ranked list of important things that were more important than podcasts. This is a reminder of what I want to spend my down time on.

My wallpaper:


One advantage to listening to fewer podcasts is that I have the chance to listen to other things that are important to me. I listen to the book of 1 Peter several times before starting a new sermon series on it. I've had the chance to listen to sermons. I take the chance to work on my Hebrew and Greek language vocabulary. Another advantage is that allows me to be prepared to write. I've had open doors to write more, and I've needed silence and boredom to be ready to do that. It also means that if my wife or kids want to talk to me, there's no scrambling to pause something.

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