How I Use My IPod for Personal Development
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It's been a long time coming, but I have finally made the transition from primarily using CDs to using an IPod MP3 player. There are a number of MP3 players in the market, and I imagine that they are useful. Here's how I use my IPod Photo (40 GB size). If you have another MP3 player, you may be able to adapt some of these ideas to using your player:
I have converted and loaded almost all of
my audio CD programs to AAC files (of course, these are programs that I have
purchased or my self-produced Power Affirmation CDs). Even after loading
all of the affirmation files, all of Tony Robbins' Personal Power (20
CDs), and several other audio books, lots of music files, I still have 30 gigs
of space left on the IPod. The most time consuming part was converting the
CDs. Loading the IPod with all this information only took minutes.
The AAC file format is compressed similar
to MP3 files; however, you can manually change the extension of the file from m4a to m4b,
so that the IPod will recognize the file as a spoken word file. When you listen to
these files in this format, they will be bookmarked. This way you
can stop a file, switch to another file, but your place will be marked when you
return to the original file. Without the bookmark, the file will restart
from the beginning. This is a huge advantage when listening to large
spoken word files.
One other very important feature of the AAC/m4b
file format: you can go to the settings of your IPod and slightly increase
the speed of the audio file. The increase speed is only slightly
noticeable; however, you can get through files faster. For example, you
can listen to an hour's worth of audio content in about 45 minutes. Or
4
hours of audio in about 3 hours. If you listen to a lot of spoken word
content, this difference is significant. I think it also increases your
retention and sharpens your mental skills over time.
For listening to the material at home, I
use the audio cord from my docking station to my stereo. Great sound.
For listening in the car, I dock my IPod
in a DLO TransPod FM connector. This plugs into my cigarette lighter and
acts as a docking station for my IPod. I can listen to the IPod through my
car studio using either the FM transmitter built into the transpod or using my
Sony car cassette adapter. This sounds great as well. And using the
docking station keeps it accessible and out of the way.
For remote listening I use headphones.
In addition to converting audio books from CDs I have purchased, I also download some books from Audible.com. What I like about Audible is that the files are already compressed and they tend to be less expensive than buying the actual CD. The variety is not as much as I would like, but they have some excellent titles that you can learn from.
I don't normally endorse non-audio products; however, I have been so impressed with the benefits I have receive from my IPod, I felt it was important to make the suggestion.