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Before & After - Audio Books

No doubt about it.

I am a book lover.

I love books and have been reading since I was a little baby. My parents made sure they instilled the love of books in me. Unlike my other mates throughout school who always had problems reading, I never had such problems.

Reading was fun to me. It was something I would do, not because I had to get good grades in school, but because I just loved to.

Like you would expect, I carried this love for books into my adulthood.

To tell you how serious this love is, I even met my wife in the library where I went to get a novel I had heard so much about.

Now that I have kids I still read. My love for books is so great that I am on my way to instilling the same love into my kids too.

I used to make it a habit to read to my kids EVERY night before they go to bed, no matter how tired I am when I get home from my job.

I didn't expect it to, but because I work long hours at my job, I always get very tired while reading to my kids at night. In many occasions I have even fallen asleep before my kids right whilst I'm reading to them!

Deep within me I could see that there just wasn't any way I could keep up with the habit of always reading to my kids each night... unless I found another job that would take up less of my time (but still pay me good wage at the same time - impossible to find such a job, right?)

At that same time that I was thinking of that, I was promoted in my job. This then demanded my presence at the office one hour before everyone else, and - you won't believe it - one hour AFTER everyone else had left the office.

Yikes, that's the one hour I spend every morning reading a chapter on motivations and inspirations and one hour I spend reading to my kids after work - all going down the drain.

I was in a great dilemma about what to do. My wife suggested I give up reading to my kids at nights, and she would do it instead, but I just couldn't let that happen because she had too much to do herself, and I didn't want to add more responsibilities for her.

I was still battling for a way out when I discovered AUDIO BOOKS!

Eureka... the savior had arrived.

Six weeks after my first contact with audio books, my dilemma has ended.

Not only have I gained back my 2 hours taken by my job, I have added many more hours to my life because of audio books.

How?

First, I now get a 2 hour value of books every morning before I get to work.

During the 1 hour it usually takes me to prepare for work, I listen to an audio book.

During the 1 hour or so it takes me to commute to and from work, I listen to an audio book.

During the 1 hour or so I spend to have lunch and break times, I listen to an audio book.

Total time gained with audio books is 3 incredibly educative hours in the mornings and afternoons.

Now my job doesn't have to take all of my time away from getting the value I get reading books.

Secondly, instead of spending the 1 hour reading to my kids each night when I get home tired, I play an audio book for them instead. Somehow I discovered that they seem to prefer the audio books to my reading.

I think I heard my daughter mumbling about how the voice from the audio book is "more awake than dad's". This shows you how sleepy I get at certain nights while reading to my kids.