The power of 1.5x

 Since I have joined my new company, my day consists of listening to a lot of recorded meetings that have happened overnight in North America (while I am fast asleep). A trick that I learnt when I started listening to podcasts a few months ago is - speed up the recording! Human beings take a lot of pauses, think and speak slow most of the times!

Our brains can comprehend other people speaking at 1.5x their normal speeds without much trouble (Yeah you have to focus better, but anyway, you are expected to focus in meetings!). The advantage is - I can save 20 minutes in a 60 minute recorded meeting (that's 33% saving of time) without any loss in the content or comprehension!

 

Now this trick only works if the speaker speaks at "normal" human talking speeds. It does not work in a multi-party meeting where some people tend to speak real fast. So if you have multiple people speaking at different speeds in a meeting, this may not work for you (unless everyone speaks at the same pace).

Anyway, now I have gotten so addicted to this trick that

1. I prefer recorded meetings to live meetings cause I don't have to participate, and I can listen to the content at "my pace"
2. I have gotten used to listening to a lot of people at 1.5x their normal talking speeds, so when I indeed have a live meeting with them, they sound super slow to me!