When I started my couch to 5K plan back in 2013 I started listening to music. But I quickly realised that this was really a wasted opportunity to discover more about the world. And a few years previously a good friend of mine suggested I listened to Podcasts.

As I didn’t have a commute to work and I wasn’t taking exercise the only way I would do that would have been sitting at my desk listening to it on my computer. And whilst I tried once or twice I could never focus on the podcast.

But for running it was perfect.

Roll forward almost two years and approximately 1400 miles and 200 hours of running I have now listened to hundreds of podcasts.

And not just running, I listen to them in the shower as well. I  think it is safe to say I love Podcasts.

Here is a statistic I picked up this morning during my shower:

If you commute to work and back every day and it takes you 10 minutes each way. Do you have any idea how much time that is? I was staggered to realise that on a 5 day week with 4 weeks holiday you will spend 80 hours commuting. I was so surprised I had to work it out myself.

That is an enormous amount of time. When I was living in London my commute used to be an hour or more. I never used that time particularly wisely, I would normally read the paper and maybe a book.

It is obvious if you think about it that time is the most finite resource. We owe it to ourselves to use it wisely to become the best we can be.

There are so many moments in our day when you have empty time.

For me Podcasts are a fantastic way to use that time. When you next commute, drive, walk or take exercise try one. They are well worth it.

My Top 7 Podcasts

Below are a list of the podcasts I am currently listening to. All of  these I highly recommend. Would love to hear some of your favourites in the comments.

The One Book Podcast – This is a really nice podcast. It is a short podcast where one book is analysed and the best idea is brought out and shared. The theory is that there should be one book each day but they seem to have stopped doing it. There are currently 32 great episodes and I am hopeful there will be more. If not then they also run another service where they do dissections of many books.

Two Drink Tim Podcast – I really enjoy this podcast. It is by Internet Marketer and Kindle Publisher, Tim Castleman. What I really like about him is how he really wears his heart on his sleeve. It’s very authentic and by extension powerful.  New podcast releases are a bit erratic. Of late he has stared doing interviews with Indie music bands which is a fascinating insight and he just did one with a really interesting author.

The Three Month Vacation Podcast – This is the podcast of a marketer called Sean D’Souza. He runs a site called Psychotactics. It is an incredibly well put together podcast and there are great insights into marketing and more.

Desert Island Discs – This is a British Radio program where an interesting  guest is invited to talk with the host through a list of 8 records they would be allowed to take with them to a desert island.

Becoming Superhuman – This is the podcast of a guy called Jonathan Levi who has a book and udemy course on SuperLearning. This is a course I am doing currently to try and help me remember more of what I read and also how to read more faster.

The James Altucher Show – James Altucher is an author and VC who has made and lost several fortunes. He has two podcasts. One that generally interviews interesting people from all fields of life. The other is a daily podcast where he answers one question every day.

The Tim Ferriss Show – Tim Ferriss is probably the world’s number one hacker of the human body. He has published three books, The Four Hour Week, The Four Hour Body and The Four Hour Chef. In his podcast he talks with world-class performers from many fields (investing, sports, business, art, etc.) to get tactics and tools you can use.

Bonus Additional 2

The Pitch – This is a new one for me and a new podcast. Just four issues in it is where early stage founders can pitch an idea to investors. It’s an interesting concept and great to hear how people pitch their ideas and then to get an insight into the VC’s minds. When looking for the domain for this I also found another similar sounding Podcast which is more established, Pitch Deck. I will report back after listening to a few more.

Have you listened to any of these? Do you have any other podcast recommendations? Or do you hate podcasts generally? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Time to write: 30 minutes
From start to finish: 1 hour
Time Editing: 5 minutes
Out of ten: 6