How To Cure Insomnia With Audiobooks

Hoppy Bouasavanh
The Post-Grad Survival Guide
4 min readJan 10, 2018

“1, 2, 3, 4, . . . , 10.

1, 2, 3, . . .,”

It was 3 A.M. I was lying on my bed counting imaginary sheep jumping across my tummy. Although my body was resting, my mind never stopped hopping around. Time seemed to crawl slowly. I took another glance at the clock.

“Ah! It’s 4:30 AM. I’m not gonna make it again,” — mumbling to myself.

I slept 3 hours per night before dragging myself up at 8 o’clock for college. Insomnia jeopardized my emotion and productivity.

Photo by Derek Liang on Unsplash

One tiring day while I was watching a cat video on YouTube, at the end of the video there was an advertisement: “Get a book for Free”.

I was interested in self-improvement and had been reading a lot about the topic. Therefore, there was no doubt whether I could resist a call-to-action of free books. I clicked the link and confronted with the weird blurb urging me to sign up and get a book to listen.

LISTEN?

Listen to a book?

Aren’t books meant to be read?

I grasped one of my favorite self-help books, “The Power of Habit”, and finished one chapter on the way to college. It amazed me that the content comprehended by listening wasn’t different from that by reading.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

The magic happened when I went to bed that night. I plugged my earphones and turned the book on. My focus was intense at the beginning. It then loosened as the book continued.

Another chapter passed by.

and another . . .

I was conscious again with static noise in my ears. I slowly opened my eyes to the sunlight shining through the window. I grinned for no reasons. While I was stretching my body, my eyes widened. I was stunned by what I recalled.

I was knocked out by the book.

I had never felt that energized since I was a baby. I remembered smiling all day. I got more works done in that day than in the entire week combined. The audiobook saved my life.

Photo by Ariel Lustre on Unsplash

Listening to the audiobook draws attention to only one thing. The attention gets soften over time until we fall to sleep. It works the same way as counting the breath, but much more informative.

An audiobook puts me to bed within 30 minutes to 2 hours. If the former is the case, I will have a long nice dream. If it’s the latter, I will finish more chapters. It’s a win-win game.

Audiobooks can turn a boring chore, a long-hour commute or a restless pre-bedtime into a college. On average, a book lengths 11 hours. With 1.5 times increase in playback speed, we have a 9-hour book. If we commute one hour per day, it results in one book a week or 40 books per year.

Congratulation! you are 3 times above the book reading average.

Audiobooks help me leverage my time and transformed my life. I hope they do the same for you.

Where to start: Get a free book from the 30-day trial at Audiobook.com. Cancel anytime.

Before you go: Have you listened to any audiobook? How does it benefit you? Feel free to share your experience in the comment below.

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