I have always emphasised listening as the single most important skill for engineers to develop. It’s easy too. It’s not the same as hearing. So I was happy to come across this podcast on listening from Australia’s ABC. It’s entertaining and thought-provoking. If you want to improve your listening skills, look for an ABC podcast with a transcript. Listen to the podcast (at full speed, for just 5 minutes or so), then prepare your notes, and then compare your notes with the transcript to find how much you missed. For more see “Learning Engineering Practice”. Or buy the book “People Skills” by Robert Bolton.

Otter.ai is a great app for improving your listening or language comprehension. Listen to any talk radio or podcast. Use Otter to create a transcript while you listen, bot don’t look at it yet. While listening, take notes. After about 5 – 10 minutes, stop listening and stop Otter. Expand your notes for a few minutes. Then compare your notes with the transcript. Highlight significant parts of the transcript that your notes did not mention. Give yourself a score out of 100.

Repeat this exercise daily and you will be surprised at how quickly your listening skills improve.

Updated 11th May 2023

Illustration Credit: Saeed Karimi at unsplash.com