You should be watching most informational videos on higher speed.
Yes, it saves time, but the point is actually to give you more options, not to reduce total time spent.
If you watch it in half the time, in the same total time you could:
- Watch again to review concepts and fill in any gaps from the first watch
- Watch again to reconsider the ideas from a different angle without being preoccupied with learning for the first time
- Watch another video with a different explanation/perspective which is more helpful to your learning
- Pause during the first watch to think about the topic and clarify your understanding without the video racing forward.
Generally, with confusing topics it's more helpful to hear the explanation again once you have a broken scaffold to anchor the ideas onto, rather than hearing the explanation slower a single time.
Understanding comes from thinking, not from input speed, so get the input in faster and spend more time thinking (within reason).
Notable exceptions are videos where the speaker is already speaking quickly, the exact pacing of the video is critical, or it has high visual information density which you need more time to process. Videos with excellent visuals are usually worth the additional time to appreciate because we can take in so much more from a visual than audio, but talking is usually a single linear input which doesn't require more time.
As for specifics?
Use whatever speed your tools support where you can still understand the speaker at without spending all your focus on it. I find for all but a rare few speakers, 2x is great, 3x is tolerable in stints, 3.5x is understandable for slower speakers but the distortion isn't worth it unless I'm intentionally skimming.
If you're not used to faster video, start at 1.25x and work your way up. Speed has diminishing time-savings and most video players only support up to 2x anyway, so stopping there is fine.
Additionally, always turn on captions. They improve focus with minor visual stimulation and something to match to the audio, reduce the risk of distraction, clarify distortions in the sped-up audio, and reinforce content since you can read and hear it at the same time. It also helps you ramp into higher speeds since most people can read faster than speak (and therefore listen), and faster text doesn't have the distortions faster speech does so it's easier to adapt to.
Besides, there's no harm in building the skill of watching faster. If you don't like it, slow it back down. Plenty of content benefits from being watched at the human timescale it was made for.
Do what works for you, don't blindly pursue efficiency.
- Rew
Nightly Notes
There's some apps which cut out silence in audio so you can get the same content at the same speed but in less time, which is a neat trick.
Speed is the only standard setting though, and it's the one everyone already has opinions on, so I focus on that.
Universality is powerful.
- Rew