I have always been a book lover.

I love books and have been reading since I was a little baby. My mom made sure she instilled the love of books in me. Unlike my other friends 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. On average I would read nine books a week. The local library was such a treasury of unread books that it became my favourite place to hang out

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

When the kids came along I wanted to instill the same love of books 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 exhausted I was when I got home from work.

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 involved arriving at work one hour earlier, and – one hour AFTER everyone else had left the office.

I felt devastated , that meant I lost the one hour I treasured every morning reading a chapter of a motivational or inspirational book to start off my day in a positive and motivated frame of mind. On top of that I lost the one hour I invested reading to my kids after work.

I was in a dilemma wondering what I should do. My husband suggested I ought to give up reading to my kids at nights, and he would do it instead. He was under as much time pressure as I was.

I was still trying to work out a solution when I discovered AUDIO BOOKS!

Eureka… the savior had arrived.

Six weeks after my first contact with audio books, my predicament 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 generally takes me to get ready 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 mom’s”.

Now… aren’t audio books wonderful?

If you have had similar problems to me, you can gain back your time by taking advantage of the amazing value of audio books.

The fact that most of the best-selling titles now come in audio book format make it far more interesting.

To get started, go online and search for the audio book version of that book you have been dying to read. Even books that your kids or spouse love to read could be available in audio book format. If they are, they will be a great time saver for you.

I am an audio book user and consider traveling time as dead or unproductive time and try to make good use of it by listening to and learning from audio books. On a recent three week visit to the UK I had several people to visit up and down the country and spent many hours in the auto. To get to the UK in the first place my journey took me twenty eight hours in total from house to house.

I started of with a fully charged iPod and spent a large part of the journey listening to Without Fail by Lee Child, a novel that I had downloaded from the audio book site AudioBookGo. It was the abridged version and passed a good six hours of the journey for me.

Unfortunately I forgot to take the charging/data transfer cable to connect my iPod to my laptop and decided not to purchase a new one during my visit. In hindsight this was foolish as I later added up the hours that I spent in the auto on journeys of over one hour and the total was thirty three hours. This equaled eleven wasted hours each week, time that I could have spent listening to a series of seminars that I have purchased earlier concerning some internet marketing techniques that I was interested in. Oh yes and I lost all those hours on the journey back from the UK.

However I did catch up with some issues on the talk radio so not all my dead time was lost. Time is something that we can never have back again but by making use of the dead and unproductive time in our lives we really can ‘put time back into out lives’ in a way of speaking.

There is so much choice and types of audio books available for downloading from the internet, the choice is so great. From classic novels to modern business books, from TV and radio humor to learning a foreign language, from biographies to historical accounts, from crime and thrillers to health and recreation how to guides. With all this choice it is difficult to understand why so many travelers do not make better use of their time and try to better or entertain themselves. Having said that lots of people are doing just this as audio books sales, from CDs and internet downloads are increasing monthly.

Of course auto and air journeys are not the only occasions when we have time that can be better used. I walk my dog for thirty minutes every day and make good use of that time by listening to my audio books, it doesn’t bother my dog at all! I can’t say that I listen to audio books anywhere else as some people do. I believe that some others listen when gardening and doing the daily chores but that’s not for me. It doesn’t take me long to wash the dishes and my gardening is quick and exhaustive and not suitable for having head phones on.

I have now purchased an independent power cable for my iPod and it is already in my travel bag so I don’t intend to lose anymore valuable time on my travels in the future. The older I am getting the more I am becoming interested in new fields and am keen to learn as much as I can. Luckily so much information is now available in audio book and down loadable form that I can utilize all the dead and unproductive time to my advantage.