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I will be watching a three hour video essay, get distracted, read posts on Lemmy, then go back to my video 15 minutes later. I realize I have no idea what was said in the last 15 minutes so I have to back up to the last point I definitely know I wasn't distracted. It will take me ten hours to watch that video.
This is why I don't do podcasts in the background, I miss stuff and the whole thing becomes a confusing distraction.
What seems to work for me is something I have seen/heard a bunch of times in the background (Futurama, electronic music) which scratches that mind wandering itch without it dragging me away from what I want to be doing.
I have two types of podcasts: those I listen to when doing work that is pretty mindless so I can focus on the podcast, and those that are entertaining but not important enough that it matters if I miss something while reading directions or thinking through next steps on my project, etc.
Come to think of it, I have one other category, actually, which are podcasts that are interesting but get a big backlog because I'm not that excited about them. I use those to fall asleep.
For me it’s similar, but podcasts for housework and cleaning, music for working, silence for drawing/problem solving.
I've probably listened to the entire MCU, in order, fifteen times over the past two years. I can ignore it and happily work or game, while it calms the tiny part of my brain that's registering it - and then I'll notice an especially good scene is coming up, so I pause whatever's currently on top and switch to the video for a scene or two... then back to work/play.
Fully Ramblomatic (previously known as Zero Punctuation) videos do this for me
It took me four days to get through Ash (2019)
Amazing movie
I stayed up until 4AM each day
I've really gotten into those police interrogation videos on YouTube. The ones that are like 3 hours of raw footage of the interrogation. You can miss large chunks because it's such a long process and just tune in when they run out of lies and confess.