How fast can you type? How fast can you talk?

Writing at the Speed of Thought

A lot of times, when you have a thought. It’s possible that the ideas can come out of your head faster than you can type. This creates a problem. The mechanics of typing quickly slow you down and you lose your train of thought.

Voice Dictation/Transcription is the Key

Here’s a trick to help you capture your thoughts quickly, and save a bunch of time. Learn to use the voice transcription services that are available to you.

Voice Transcription Used to be Horrible – No Longer

Just a few years ago these did not really work well at all. They were either expensive or slow or both. In past companies I’ve had administrative assistance or transcription service providers who would listen to an audio tape or digital recording and type up documents. No longer. Now your phone or computer can do it and its free. This let you talk out a first draft and concept content quickly, just using your voice.

It’s so easy to do today. Kids can do it.

This is so simple, I’ve been teaching this to my kids. At nine and 11 years old they are nowhere near the my awesome (50 words a minute) typing speed. It’s hunt and peck and hunt some more. You can see it in their faces, how they know what they want to say, but they are just so incredibly slowed down by having to figure out how to type it.

First Drafts Require Speed and Flow

I found a key to success in writing, is to get the ideas out of your mind as fast as possible. Then you have all the time in the world to review, revise, correct, etc.

Don’t Take the Painful Path

So many people come at this the slow way. They try to think, and type, and correct, and format, and style… all at once… End it ends up going nowhere and becomes quite frustrating. I think this is why some people hate writing. They’ve never had an easy way to do it, unlike the options you have today.

iPhone’s make it easy

You can do this with the text to Transcription feature on your phone. You’ve probably use this most replying to text messages. But you can also do this inside of any notepad application or editor on your phone or iPad.

I’ve taught my kids to capture their thoughts this way. I tell them to think it then say it, let the robot type it up at first, and then go back and fix it up right. This lets them get the thoughts out of their head quickly. Then they can organize, review and revise it. My daughter uses it to make a list of her homework each day and to help write up her daily journal entry. Daniel keeps notes of his game ideas and monster creature descriptions.

Google Docs and Macbooks

On a MacBook you can enable dictation in your system preferences and then just by touching the command key twice it turns on the transcription service. You can use this inside of any website or word processor to capture text effortlessly.

In Google Docs you just click tools, voice typing, and a little box pops up in your web browser that transcribes nonstop.

Otter.AI Transcribes Voice Memos and Zoom Meetings

Sometimes you just need to use your phone and record a voice memo versus doing live transcription. But how can you get that converted to text? Just get a free www.Otter.ai account. You can upload your audio file and in a couple minutes get a text transcription.

You can also connect your Otter account with your zoom account and then after having a video conference call I have the entire call with all the participants voice discussions fully transcribed into a tax document. It’s amazing. I’ve used that feature to conduct interviews as well and then have the text of the interview and the discussion available after the fact.

Future screencast demos to share will show you how to

• Dictate/transcribe directly in the phone into a notepad app
• Dictate/transcribe directly into a Google document on the web
• Use the built in MacBook transcription
• Record an audio file (voice memo) and send it to Otter
• Connect Otter to Zoom and have your meeting transcribed

Question

What have you been wanting to write more about now that you know you can do it faster and easier?

Video Introduction

I’m gonna show you a secret that will change your life. A lot of people feel writing is frustrating time consuming. But I will let you know that the feature of voice dictation makes it incredibly simple. You talk the computers type. You have all the time in the world to review revise correct style. But what you don’t have time for is losing your train of thought when you have something to say.

You can do this with your iPhone your MacBook your Google docs even a voice recorder. Otter.ai has a transcription service in the cloud for free, all of these things make it easier to get your thoughts out and end up with text that you can quickly review and revise.

I’ll make some follow-on ‘how-to’ videos showing you specifically how this works on your phone with a couple of apps and with the voice recording so you can see exactly how to do it. But it’s very easy and it speeds up your writing and content creation tenfold.

If you have something to say and taking the time to sit down and write it has been an obstacle you’re going to find this to be one of the most freeing and enabling technologies that you’ve ever come across. And it’s very easy to take it to a whole new level and enjoy the time savings that come with that.

So here’s to writing more, faster and easier than ever.