Audiobooks: your best tool for your daily commute

The average daily commute to and from work is one hour. That means, on average, you spend 5 hours on the road a week. Or about 20 hours on the road a month. Or 240 hours on the road a year! What do many of us do while traveling? Most of us listen to music. Some start talking on the cell phone. Others feel the need to yell at every inept driver on the road. When you consider that most college students spend approximately 250 hours a year in the classroom to earn a degree, you can understand the true importance of those accumulated road hours. Travel hours should never be wasted, but rather become time that creates value for personal and / or professional development.

Over the years, I have amassed a large collection of audiobooks and courses. I make sure I have an audiobook CD ready to play every time I get in my vehicle for a trip that will last more than 20 minutes. Just think about it. On a commute, you can have the education equivalent of a college lecture right there in your car, without doing anything extra.

People are often surprised that I can speak both Portuguese and Spanish and ask me where I learned to speak those languages. I tell them: “Inside my car.” I just listen to those foreign language courses every day to and from work and since I have not added anything extra to my already busy schedule, I have self-taught in two new languages.

The audiobook industry publishes a host of great titles for personal and professional development and I highly recommend that you turn those hours of travel into hours of significant value for your overall self-improvement. If you spend your travel hours learning something of value, in a 30-year career, you can get the education equivalent of seven or eight Ph.Ds without changing a thing in your life. Take action today and grab your first audiobook and make it a regular travel ritual.