 What is up guys karma medic here and welcome back to another dose if you're new to the channel then hi My name is Nasser and I'm now a fourth year medical student studying at Kings College London And in today's video I'm gonna be talking about how listening to audiobooks and reading books in general has completely changed my life It's completely shifted my focus and my thinking my perspective on a whole variety of topics And I want to share that experience with you guys that hopefully if you're like me and you used to not read at all When you were younger, you'll change your mind about that and start reading more a little bit of background about me I used to never read books as a child and when I say never I mean never If we ever got assigned a book to read for English class when I was in high school I would put it off and it was at the very bottom of my priority list if I had homework for maths physics Chemistry you name it I would get it done as soon as possible But being asked to sit down and read a book for me just had so much like activation energy in order to do That task I did not want to do it. I did not find it fun and I thought it was a complete waste of time I actually didn't read a single book for fun or for pleasure until I was about 21 years old This is towards the end of my degree in Canada studying immunology, biotechnology and molecular biology And I think the reasons that I didn't enjoy reading when I was younger are threefold stimulation visualization and sensation So as a child when you're a kid and if you were anything like me You would just be bouncing off the walls with so much energy constantly moving from one activity to another Constantly bored you do something for a little bit of time get bored move on to the next thing get bored move on to the next thing And so sitting down to read a book provided almost zero stimulus for me in comparison to doing other activities Like running around outside with my friends playing sports playing video games watching a movie You know these types of activities have infinite stimulus coming into my eyes picking up all my different senses and you know engaging me in the activity So as a kid wrapping my head around the idea that sitting down in front of this black and white piece of paper where there's no pixels There's no colors. There's no moving parts. There's no sound. There's no smell Just literally sitting down in front of a black and white piece of paper It was difficult for me to associate that with some form of entertainment with something that is fun something That's exciting something that you know gets me out of bed in the morning I always thought that if I was gonna sit down and do an activity or dedicate hours of my life towards something that I would kind of have a Physical tangible result from doing that thing whereas with reading you don't really get anything physical or tangible all the sort of gains or experience or Positive value that comes from reading books. You can't really see you can't feel it. It's all in your head It's all in your development in your thinking in your vocabulary and your knowledge and your skills and your understanding of culture Etc. Etc. It's nothing you can sort of put your hands on and touch and feel And so as a kid who got really bored really fast and was constantly trying to do one thing to the next to the next I couldn't see the value in sitting down and reading a book for hours on end And then not having some sort of result or something that I can show as this is what I've done with my time So the positive gains that you get from reading books from listening to audiobooks. They're completely invisible You know your increased understanding of different cultures your widening perspective Just general increased knowledge and understanding of different people in different situations These are things that you know, it's not like I don't know how to describe like academic intelligence It's not something that you can then write on a piece of paper and score out of a hundred on a test These are invisible skills that are obviously invaluable to developing as a person and things that are going to be very valuable later on in life When it comes to interacting with others and learning about the world and about going to university as a kid I couldn't see that at all And then the last reason is Definitely a bit of a strange one and very personalized to me Which is that I really really really do not like the sensation of feeling a book like the old Paper books. I'm not talking about textbooks that are like laminated and shiny I'm talking about like a book that you would buy it like the bookstore the library You know what I'm talking about like with the paper pages I that feeling of that paper in my hands just feels so strange to me similar to how I eat different textures And I find them whipped cream or foam or toothpaste those types of things and make me feel very strange when I eat them I have that same sensation when I hold a physical book and as stupid as it sounds as a kid I feel like that really put me off from reading that really put me off from sitting down To hold this thing in my hands. So to make a very long story short. I hated reading as a kid I did not enjoy books one bit and I just could not see the value I could not understand the value that could come from reading a book building out these worlds and imaginative play Creative thinking and all of these invisible intangible skills that I would gain And I want to shift to talk about why I love reading sort of what's changed over the last couple of years That's made me fall in love with this idea of listening to something and building out these imaginative worlds in my head And how it's sort of being able to make me feel and process my emotions in a way that no other form of entertainment or media Can do for me. I would love to hear your personal book recommendations I'm open to absolutely anything fiction nonfiction. I want to broaden my horizons of reading as much as possible So please let me know your favorite books in a comment down below and I'll get around to reading them eventually So I think my love for reading started a couple of years ago when I moved to London for medical school And I suddenly found myself having upwards of an hour an hour and a half of commuting time every single day moving to the hospital or to University so during this commute time I would either be staring at an underground tube Which is obviously really really boring and soul-crushing or listening to music which is fun for a while But you know, you're obviously going to get bored of that after some time Even if I wanted to do some studying by pulling out a textbook or an iPad There's literally not enough space on the underground when you're commuting in the morning and in the in the evening You're literally like this like a sardine just packed in between a whole bunch of people There's just no way to get it done And I just couldn't come to grips with the fact that I was going to be Wasting three hours of my life every single day commuting to and from somewhere without doing anything useful without bettering myself Without doing something productive and I started off with nonfiction books because you know That's sort of the background that I came from and I wanted to be able to read a book or listen to a book And then have sort of takeaways where I know, okay, this is what I learned from reading this book I have x y and z and this is something tangible that I can take away from this experience of listening to a book I honestly enjoyed that so much. I read a whole bunch of autobiographies for ilan musk, jeff bezos Phil knight the ceo of nike or co-founder of nike was ceo Something like that and then as time went on and on and I listened to all kinds of different books I started listening to fiction as well one or two fiction books I'm still I'm getting better at it But I've really enjoyed the fiction Fiction books too and through the listening of these audiobooks when I tell you that my eyes were opened seemingly for the first time in my life And I was exposed to this world of books and listening to books and all this knowledge that I could gain from this new form of entertainment I was amazed it's it's almost like discovering a new form of entertainment So it's as if you've never watched movies before in your life and then you start watching movies Or you've never played video games before in your life and then you start playing video games It just opened up this entire world of a way to entertain myself and learn something and be productive in my life So i'm personally a big big fan of video games I've been playing video games my whole life starting on you know the game boy advances the game boy What was it sp? I think it was no the game boy color. That's what it was before the flip screen Playstations xboxes you name it. I've been playing video games my whole life And I absolutely love them and they are a form of entertainment a way of passing time That is unlike anything else in this world when you try to explain to someone who's never played video games or never Got an into video games what it's like to control the character in a movie or in a story that's on your screen It's impossible You just you just kind of have to do it And so that's what I discovered with books is that it's this entire different form of entertainment that you cannot get From anything else and I've discussed this at length on my podcast the karma cast which if you're not subscribed to already You should definitely subscribe to and listen to but anyways This is something that took me a long time to figure out and to realize about books is that they give you sort of 20 percent of the story They just give you black and white words on a piece of paper literally and you have to build out the remaining 80 percent You have to put in the effort of the thinking and the creativity Of imagining what this world looks like and what the reader is trying to get you to feel and to imagine It's incredible It's something that no other form of entertainment forces you to do listening to podcasts listening to music watching movies playing video games Those are all sort of things are being thrown at you and you are digesting them Whereas a book is they give you the ingredients and then you have to go and bake the cake You get what i'm saying and for that I appreciate books so much more because books respect you as someone who's digesting that content They respect you that you are going to fill in the gaps and you are going to imagine and you are going to create The world that they are sort of seeding to you Now I love audiobooks for a lot of reasons But the main one is that they've allowed me to explore and enjoy this whole realm of books and reading While doing things that I would normally be doing anyways, for example when i'm commuting when i'm on a run when i'm walking around the city I can be listening to an audiobook and gaining knowledge and gaining information and entertainment at the same time Which is literally incredible It's it sort of it feels like a cheat code that i've unlocked in life That I just didn't know about before it's amazing. It just sounds too good to be true You know if I was reading a physical book I would have to be sat down somewhere on a couch or at a desk on a chair and literally immobile I would just have to be sitting there looking at this one thing Whereas with audiobooks I can gain the same value from that while also moving around or running or doing some other activity Which is just incredible. I cannot stress How much of a beneficial thing this has been in my life? How much value I derive from being able to listen to books while moving around and doing other things Now that's not to say that you should always be moving around because some of the best times I've had listening to books are when I get a coffee and I go to the park and I sit on a bench And I just sit there and take in my surroundings and people watch while listening to a book. I mean, oh, oh my god The entertainment and the serenity and the happiness the zen that I get from that experience is unmatched I there's nothing else in this life that I do that gives me the same feeling as that The second thing that I love about audiobooks is that I can listen to things at two times speed Which is amazing because I consume most of my content at two times speed anyway All the lectures I've ever had at university or in medical school I listen to at two times speed because most people talk way too slow and I can be digesting the same amount of information In half the time and so that's why I always play things on two times speed Now sometimes I'm listening to a book and two times speed is too fast for me I'm not able to understand and comprehend everything that's going on And so I'll slow down to one and a half or 1.75 times speed You know not say that two times speed is like this golden rule that you always have to follow And the third thing that I enjoy about audiobooks is that it's a didactic experience. The book is talking to me I'm not going through the actual physical effort of reading the book and processing the words on a page I'm just sitting back relaxing and the audiobook is talking to me and I'm just listening to it So that makes it a little bit more of a passive experience And I recognize that if it was more of an active experience like reading it would be a little bit different I'm just not willing to sit down and read something physically sitting still somewhere I love the idea that I can listen to something and do other things at the same time Listening to audiobooks in that way has just been life changing for me All right, I want to finish off this video by giving you guys a couple recommendations of books that I've read that I have found Incredible that have made me cry or almost cry almost cry I should say All right, so let me just quickly scroll through what's on my phone. So this is the next book that I'm reading It's about the CEO of Walt Disney. This is the book that I just read war doctor, which was Unbelievable unbelievable. It's probably at the top of my list of recommendations for this video. Read that book Then we've got blood oil Just all all these books. Just have a look if any of these sound remotely interesting to you google them Just go have a read the autobiographies that I mentioned before we have Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Phil Knight And also Edward Snowden very very very good autobiographies bad blood if you're into science and technology That's an incredibly great book very very thrilling keeps you on the edge of your seat and then into thin air by John crack hour Hope i'm pronouncing that right tells the story of an expedition to Everest that happened I don't remember the day but several years ago where I think 13 people died on the same day and there's a couple movies about it There's some documentaries about it All right guys and that brings us to the end of the video if I can close this video on one thing It is to reach out to anyone who was like me when I was younger and thought that books were a waste of time And they were useless and they were not fun and they were not entertaining. I'm talking to you Please please please try reading give it a go think of any topic you like and just start there It's definitely made me so much happier genuinely and allowed me to get in touch with my emotions I didn't even talk about that in this video. It's incredible. Just just trust me on this start reading and all right guys Thank you so much for watching I hope you found this video useful and if you don't already read I hope this video has convinced you to start reading and if you do already read Well, then I guess you know everything that I've already said and happy reading All right, that is it from me. I'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace