My attention span and audiobooks/podfics...

[hells_half_acre]

So, in order to try to stay focused on my job - ie: DO IT. I've been listening to podfics while I work. This seems to do the trick very well, as I've always been someone who needs to have all parts of my brain occupied on a task in order to be happy. Mainly, I just have to be fully engaged, so that no part of me is bored...no part of me feels as though it isn't being 100% utilized.

The problem with a desk job, is that you just sit there...which is fine - I might not be using my body, but I need my hands for typing, so that counts...it's not as satisfying as woodworking or deck-repair, but my hands are still needed. I'm not using my mind so much, since the job is really just a series of tasks that don't require me to think beyond "Ok, so now I'll look up 1963 and see if we have full primary documents..." which isn't very interesting when it comes right down to it. 

So, I've been listening to music/audiobooks/podfics while I work, because then my ears are busy and my mind can both think of the primary records for 1963 and think "I bet the butler did it!" or "I love this song."

Problem is that I'm running out of resources. Music doesn't always cut it....I'm having trouble finding free/interesting audiobooks...and I've pretty much mined the Supernatural gen podfic community (a large problem being that I've already READ most of the fics there and don't really need to listen to them again.)

So, if anyone has any suggestions for things that I might find interesting to do while I work, let me know.

Comments

[jillsjourney.livejournal.com]

don't know if you know about http://www.librivox.org - they have free audiobooks of many public domain works. it's like an audio version of project gutenberg.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Ooo...thanks! I didn't know about that at all.

[claudiapriscus.livejournal.com]

I had a summer job once as a courier basically, which meant long hours in the car. I ended up scouring the library's collection of audio books for things to listen to. My favorites above all else were the books by Elizabeth Peters and Dave Barry's "Big Trouble." Some books don't work as audiobooks very well, but with these, I think they were actually better as audio books.

Another set I'd recommend is the Thursday Next books (although they really do need to be read in order).

So I guess this is kind of a joint book/audio recommendation. hmmm.

[hells-half-acre.livejournal.com]

Cool, thanks for the recommendations. I'll see if I can find them somewhere. :-)