In a rush to get more done today? Want to watch a video on YouTube? This is a common dilemma for me as I’m a writer who will often use YouTube as a source of inspiration and research, but unfortunately this takes up time meaning I’m not writing and so not actually earning money. Pickle.
Luckily someone introduced me to a hack which not only solves this problem but has also helped me to think faster, speak more eloquently and pump out more words-per-minute when writing.
YouTube for Your Brain
The trick is simple: next time you’re watching any video on YouTube, turn up the speed to 1.5x or even 2x. This way you’ll be able to absorb a large amount of information 75% or 50% of the time which essentially means you can learn twice as much, or do twice as much with the time left over.
Furthermore, this will then put your brain into overdrive for a while – especially if you watch something long. That’s because you will be forced to process the words and to make sense of them at a much faster rate. What’s very interesting is that it only really takes one or two goes before you start noticing this difference and while 2x will be too fast for you to begin with most likely, you’ll very quickly find that you wish there was an even faster setting.
Your Inner Monologue and Your Thinking Speed
Naturally this is going to leave you in a situation where for a while at least your inner monologue is moving slightly faster. This is similar to the phenomenon we all experience when we’ve been driving on the motorway at 70mph only to come off and drop back down to 30mph – now 30 feels incredibly slow! Naturally the rate of your internal monologue is then going to speed up, meaning that you can think through concepts quicker.
Think that sounds like nonsense? Well studies actually show just how language can affect our ‘processing speed’ and potentially enable us to do things like solving problems faster (New Scientist talks about that here). Even something as simple as the number of syllables in a word will impact on how long it takes us to ‘sound out’ a sum in our head and thus means we’ll complete the sum more slowly or more quickly.
Whatever is going on, really the best way to sample this is to try it for yourself. So next time you want to quickly grab some information from YouTube, try putting it on 2x speed and enjoy revving your brain up for a bit as a result.