A study was done by Harvard Health Watch, which looked at exactly how many hours Americans spend driving in their cars.
Source:
http://blog.tempo.io/2013/7-time-consuming-things-an-average-joe-spends-in-a-lifetime/
They found that Americans spend 101 minutes per day just in their vehicle, usually commuting. There is no way to get around the fact that we require transportation so that we can get to our jobs and earn money(unless of course you are a full time Steemer!), but we CAN do something about this time spent driving. Over a lifetime of driving, this adds up to 4.33 years ALONE. Many people find themselves getting depressed at how much time the have to spend in the car. How much do you think you could learn during that time instead of letting the situation get you down?
What you choose to listen to while driving(or taking public transit) can have a profound effect on your productivity. I'm not saying that you should never listen to music or the news, but music doesn't keep your mind active in the same way that learning something new does. As far as the news goes, how healthy is it to load up on wars, kidnappings, murders, and fires in the area right before work? Don't keep your head in the sand, but realize that pessimism is always popular, which is why the news will be mostly covering negative events.
Today we are blessed with more options to learn than ever before in the history of mankind. Literally any subject you want to know more about can be accessed, and usually for free. Some things might be a little difficult to learn strictly through listening, but this shouldn't be a deterrent.
The number of podcasts and audio books available is so large that you can find whatever category you're looking for. Some topics could include new languages, history, philosophy, theology, economics, political theory, business, or finance just to name a small few. Below are a couple of my favorite podcasts, the Tom Woods Show and the Isaac Morehouse podcast. Tom Woods covers a huge variety of political/economic issues from an Austro-libertarian lens, and Isaac Morehouse explores mostly entrepreneurship and education topics also from the same libertarian viewpoint.
http://tomwoods.com/podcasts/
http://isaacmorehouse.com/podcast/
The late Zig Ziglar called this concept "automobile university" or a "rolling university." He estimated that the average person could obtain a masters degree worth of information every three years simply by learning passively via audio while driving.
I look at it this way. Food is what we feed our bodies, and good food results in better health while bad food results in worse health. So it is very similar with our minds. The things we watch and listen to are like food for our minds. If we feed it good food, we will have a healthy mind. Bad food will result in an unhealthy mind. So be careful of what you are feeding your mind!
