This typifies the trap I think a lot of us fall into sometimes, particularly programmers. We get so caught up in trying to find technical solutions to a perceived problem that we don't take a step back and ask if what we're trying to do makes sense at all.

Why do you want to listen to an audio book AND program at the same time? If both require your full attention then do them separately and so you can give it to them.

If you really are only interested in a small number of "important bits" in your audio book then maybe an audio books is not the right form for that information. Text is a lot easier to skim read, maybe you can even find a plot summary somewhere to speed things up. Or maybe you want a heavily abridged version of the audio book where it just tells you the important plot points, but that doesn't sound like very much fun.

I can't even listen to music while I program, let alone an audiobook. So my suggestion is: Just give up.

Everyone's mind is different, of course, but I'd hypothesize that even if you can listen to a book and program "simultaneously", your language centers are probably doing a lot of task switching, thereby impairing your creativity. You might find that if you just focus on the programming you will ship faster, thus leaving you time in the day to enjoy your audiobook while running on the treadmill. Win-win-win.

I can listen to music -- but it has to have a low novelty factor. Old favorites I've heard many, many times before or some highly-repetitive electronic music can be comforting without being distracting.

I can listen to music but it can't have any lyrics that I can concentrate on. It has to be electronic or jazz, something that puts me in a certain mood but I can still kep my concentration intact.

Preemptively pausing the book when my work requires full attention works for me. I also use the 30 second replay feature on the iPhone. Maybe the most important thing is to pick the right book type. I find historical non-fiction is great for me because I often already know a bit about the subject so I can listen and just grab some random facts or stories without being concerned about every detail. I rarely multi-task with complex fiction. I feel like I'm missing too much.

when i was a kid i used to go to sleep with the radio on. in the country town i was from all we had at the time was an AM station that played classics.

as a teenager i found that i knew the words to _heaps_ of classic tracks. i'm not sure if its because of the conscious or the unconscious (ie sleeping) (or a combination of both) listening i did, but found it weird.

remembering this (in my 30's now), i thought it would be and interesting experiment to try it again, pretty much trying to pick stuff up by osmosis.

I have some learn french audio books and put them on in my ears while performing various tasks. the idea is that i dont concentrate on the book per se, but the other task at hand.

for me in my 30's now, there wasnt the expected "kung fu, i know kung fu" moment, so i thought, as i dont use french in my normal day to day activities it didnt really work so well.

later on (with my french speaking GF) we would have a chat and i would ask things like "is this a french word" etc etc... i'm not sure these words were from previous conversations, or whatever, so from a scientific POV, its pretty much a negative... in my unscientific opinion however, i think that i have absorbed a bit of french from the osmosis type of learning.

i guess it depends on your goals and what you want to achieve.

if you want to pick up hard facts quickly, then learning by osmosis, at least in my experience, is not a very efficient way of doing it.

if you just want to pick things up "along the way" the learning my osmosis may work for you, however keep in mind you may not have the "kung fu, i know kung fu" moments.

as always YMMV :-)

I don't know what kind of answer you expect ... of course if you're "in the zone" you won't be paying attention to an audio book. The higher concern for me isn't that you'll miss important parts of the book, but rather that you'll make errors while working or be less productive.

Try listening to it when you're driving, working out, eating, etc.

The important content of a book probably constitutes only a small fraction of that book.

One could imagine audio alerts before important points.

The listener could even indicate the minimum importance threshold for audio alerts.

People could do this for conversations too! Imagine zoning out while your wife chats away, and then, bing!, you're alerted to the fact that she's about to tell you she's pregnant! Awesome!

I'd set my importance threshold to somewhere above "I think we should get the new curtains in puce" but below "and they only cost 500 dollars".

Good luck asking authors to identify which parts of their book can be safely ignored.

Seriously - if you're coding then that is what you should be concentrating your attention on. Listen to an audiobook while you're cooking, exercising or whatever. [edit] mechanical fish puts it well (currently) below:

I can't even follow along an audio book while doing nothing. I keep zoning out.

Why don't you try working while at work?