Patrick Zeis In Balanced Achievement’s ‘iThrive’ series, we aim to present you with a variety of useful iOS and Android Apps that you can utilize to enhance your life and accelerate your personal growth. We meticulously select innovative Apps that were designed to help individuals make personal changes needed to move their lives in the direction of happiness, success, and fulfillment. In this article, we look at the Audible App, which offers users an easily accessible library of personal development and self-help audiobooks.
iThrive App Profile:
App: Audible
Cost: Multiple Subscription Options
App Focus: Audiobooks
Audible Overview:
When looking at transportation and commuter statistics in the United States, one thing becomes overtly clear: We spend a lot of time traveling from destination to destination. When you only take into account the 26-minute commute time the average American spends traveling to and from work, we are talking about a collective 1.8 trillion minutes, or 1.2 billion days, annually spent in cars, buses, and subways.
Moreover, these staggering figures don’t take into account the time we spend getting from point A to point B for non-work related activities. Unfortunately, much of the time people spend moving from one place to another is spent impractically. While people-watching, surfing the web, and daydreaming keep us occupied, we have to wonder if we could potentially get more out of this time, and the answer is yes.
By committing ourselves to use the award-winning Audible App for iOS and Android, we can transform our lives one bus or plane ride at a time.
On the Audible App, which is powered by Amazon, you can find over 180,000 audiobooks, many of which are dedicated to the various realms of personal and professional development. Undoubtedly, you can find titles on spirituality, psychology, relationships, finance, fitness, and many other self-help topics. Imagine what type of person you could become if you pledged to spend the 13,000 annual minutes you spend commuting, to and from work, listening to the transformative audiobooks you can find on Audible.
It was in the early 90s when Donald Katz, an award-winning journalist and author, began conceptualizing the idea for a small portable device that housed audiobooks after dealing with the pain of lugging around a cassette player on his jogs through Central Park. In 1995, Katz put his idea into action and founded Audible, which has since evolved into an easy-to-use Android and iOS App that has won 24 Audie Awards and 1 Grammy. Currently, Audible users collectively listen to over 1 billion hours of audiobook recordings each year.
Since Katz partnered with Amazon in 2008, the Audible App has vastly improved users’ experience with numerous features that keep individuals engaged and motivated to listen. In your App profile, you can track your daily, weekly, and monthly listening time as you work your way up from a newbie listening level to the levels of scholar and master. There are also a number of badges you accumulate for completing various listening-related tasks. For example, you receive the Mount Everest Badge once you listen to a book over 24 hours long and the Daily Dipper Badge upon listening to an audiobook for seven straight days.
One of the most useful features associated with Audible is Whispersync, which allows users to easily switch between listening to audiobooks and reading the same books on their Kindle.
Like many of the other Amazon Family products, Prime members receive discounts and incentives for using Audible. Recently, Prime members were given free access to Audible Channels and a rotating selection of more than 50 audiobooks. Yet still, the best way to enjoy Audible is through a monthly or annual plan. For $14.95 each month, users get one credit to purchase any audiobook they desire, and for $22.95 each month, users get two credits to purchase any two audiobooks. For $149.50 annually, users get 12 purchasing credits, and for $229.50 each year, users get 24 credits. Not only do all credits come without expiration, having a membership with Audible also takes upwards of 30% off additional titles users purchase.
When looking at our daily lives, it is clear to see that there is time that we all could be using more effectively. Whether we are commuting to and from work, washing the dishes, or walking our dogs, Audible offers us an unmatched opportunity for personal growth. The company’s motto is to ‘Unleash the power of the spoken word,’ and we can use the App’s seemingly endless words of wisdom to improve our lives in a wide variety of ways.
