Voice First Creation

I Dropped My Keyboard to Write 4x Faster

👋 The Challenge: When Typing Starts to Hurt

I type a lot.

For coding, for school, for my personal writing. At one point, I churned out about 20,000 words in a few days (writing my own novel, I was in an obsession phase) and then, my hands started to hurt from all the typing.

This is also known as RSI: Repetitive Strain Injury. A rather common problem for coders.

It got bad enough that I was considering telling my advisor about it, because my arm hurt when I moved my thumb (sounds weird, I know, but it hurt quite a lot.

My entire life is online. My specialty is knowledge work so I still kept typing.

At first, I looked into better setups. I got a split keyboard and even learned a new keyboard layout called Colemak-DH (I highly recommend). They helped with the pain, for sure.

But I still felt like the actual getting-my-thoughts-down part could be easier.

I even considered this guy’s random sounds → coding framework. He made this 12 years ago, because he is an emacs god. I needed solutions that were more plug-and-play.

With our current level of tech in 2025, there really is an easier, more natural way to work. I call this philosophy: Voice-First Creation. It’s really changed how I write and think.

If you would rather hear me talk about it,

Here is a video that shows my workflow for dictating and formatting my morning thoughts with AI.

💡 The Shift: Why Talking Just Felt Better

The main idea behind voice-first creation is pretty simple: I dictate to get my first drafts down + to tell AI how to edit for me.

It might not sound like a huge change, but it’s a tiny snowball that rolled into a giant boulder impacting my thinking process, my writing workflow and even how I reflect on things.

Benefit #1: Walk n Talk 🏃🏻‍♀️

You are free! When you are dictating, instead of typing, you can walk around as if you are having a call.

I find that my best ideas come when I'm not at my desk. It’s like I’m just chatting through my ideas.

Also typing for long on the phone = thumb RSI

Benefit #2: 🔥 Ideas escape

It kills your inner critic. The grumpy worrier that is brooding in my head and squashing ideas before they even get out? It can’t move fast enough when I’m just speaking.

A bit like the idea-soccer-ball got kicked past the goalie.

It feels less like I’m “officially writing” and more like I’m just thinking out loud.

Benefit #3: 🚀 Speed!

One of the first things I noticed was how much faster I could get ideas out. We just talk way faster than we can type.

• Think about it: most folks talk at around 120 to 200 words per minute.

• Typing? It’s closer to 40 words per minute for most people.

That’s a huge difference – like 3 to 4 times faster! It means I can save those fleeting thoughts before they disappear.

Benefit #4: 🧠 More Brain Power Allocated to Essentials

Typing takes up brain space, right?

You might not notice it anymore if you can touch type, but there is this strain of having to do this physical thing (typing) compared to talking. When I switched to talking, a lot of that mental work just went away.

Speaking is a more basic human ability, deeply ingrained over hundreds of thousands of years. It's how people have always brainstormed, told stories, shared knowledge, and debated.

We are more fluent in speech than we are in any other form of writing.

For me, this means more of my brain can focus on the actual ideas I’m trying to get out. It feels like my thoughts flow better when I’m not also worrying about the keyboard.

Problem & Fix: ✍️ AI Helps Clean Up and Saves Time

(Problem) Okay, so talking out a first draft isn't a perfect solution. Sometimes you think all over the place, there are typos and you don’t even know what you are talking about.

(Solution) But that’s where new AI tools are super helpful. They make formatting and editing way easier.

My spoken notes, especially when I’m brainstorming, are super messy. So, I use Google AI Studio (it’s free) to help sort them out. It can organize my thoughts into clear sections, give summaries, or add emoji (I love emoji, visual signposting for the win!).

The best part is how much time and mental energy this saves. This is why I love technology, because it saves human effort, specifically my effort, which leaves us with more energy to do other things. It makes more possible.

🤔 Philosophy: Talking Helps You Think Things Through

We all know “Write to Think”, the idea that you must express your thoughts, in order to know them. You cannot think inside your head, those are all vague feelings not fleshed out ideas.

It is so important to get your thoughts out of your head to really understand them. You know how an idea can seem super clear in your mind, but then when you try to explain it, it’s not so clear anymore? Talking your ideas out is like the middle ground between ‘in head’ and ‘write it out’. It is easier but less clear… until you use AI to help you organize and think.

I like using AI as a thinking conversational partner because it is unable to go away. So it's not like having to find a person who can be there for you at the time when you are free to do this. But also because having a conversational partner means that they can point out where your ideas don't make sense. because if they're trying to organize it from the thoughts that you have given them and they can't get it, something is missing here. It helps you spot where you need to think through. Like how writers have beta readers.

Fun History Facts: History of Thought and Communication

Ancient Greeks and Romans highly valued oral debate and discussion as central to their societies (democracy, philosophy, public life). Orators were politicians. They were the ones who developed frameworks for persuasion: appeals to ethos (credibility), pathos (emotion), and logos (logic).

Socrates, believed that true understanding emerged from the dynamic interplay of ideas in live discussion. His method of having conversations and debates, we now call the Socrates method.

In China, we have Confucianism.

In modern day, we still have books like The Courage to Be Disliked. But I think we have forgotten the value of debating, instead we have too much belief in giving information (books, videos and articles) instead of engaging in debates.

Some of us try to learn by question-inspired understanding. But there is a change in attitude. We don’t really have an expected wrestle with whether or not we should believe in the information that's given to us. Nowadays it's like “take it or leave it, my arguments are here”, not “I'm going to convince you properly through debate”. We even do fake news.

There was genuine concern, famously voiced by Socrates, that written texts would be detrimental. Because:

• He thought that relying on written texts would lead to forgetfulness, as people would cease to exercise their own memory, instead depending on external marks.

• He believed writing could create a false sense of wisdom. People might read many things without proper instruction and appear knowledgeable while lacking true understanding. (This is me. I feel stabbed.)

• Lack of Interaction: A written text, unlike a live interlocutor, cannot answer questions, clarify its meaning, or defend itself. Socrates compared it to a painting of a person that, though lifelike, remains silent when questioned.

I am totally an introverted hermit who doesn’t want face-to-face conversations but, I do agree that live conversations are really life-changing, compared to mere writing.

Conversation is clarifying, it provides an avenue to voice doubts and challenge assumptions that the author brought up, instead of having doubts then you just assume that it is probably fine.

Next Steps: Conversation

I think talking to think is a step back into what our ancestors used to do. The next level of this is to have an actual conversation (there is AI for this, haha).

When I chat through something, I can spot the holes in my logic, or parts that need more work, or connections I didn’t see before. It’s a good way to really figure out what you think, kind of like "thinking by talking."

If you are interested, here is how I do this:

✨ My Takeaway: A Better Way to Write in the 21st Century

If you write – for school, for fun, for work – and maybe your hands hurt too, or you want a way to get your thoughts down easier, voice-first creation is worth a shot. For me, it’s meant:

• My hands feel way better.

• I catch more of my ideas, quicker.

• Getting that first draft down feels more natural.

• Editing is easier, especially with AI to help.

It’s definitely made my life a lot better.

Quick Exercise

I recommend starting with using it to clarify your thoughts.

Step 1: Get a voice dictation app

You can watch my video for my analysis of which app to use (TLDR: Voicepal has the best quality experience + a free trial. Make sure you are getting Ali Abdaal’s VoicePal, not a fake.). I have yet to find an iOS app that is fully free, but I really won’t recommend apple dictate due to accuracy issues.

Step 2: Use brain. Or don’t. Just talk.

Turn on dictation. Talk about the most frustrating problem you have had recently. Pretend you are complaining to your best friend.

You can also go find another journalling prompt but I found that this works best. Talk for a good 5 to 10 minutes if you can.

Step 3: Use AI. Be a smart lazy human.

You need an AI.

• Google AI Studio is free

• Claude / ChatGPT are pretty decent too.

• If you have privacy concerns + beefy computer, use LM Studio (Mac app) and download a local model e.g. QwQ 32B

Here is the prompt I use. Put this in the system prompt window (top window for Google AI Studio / side window for LM Studio):

Breakdown the following stream of consciousness thought into bullet points. A bullet point for each idea or argument. Nest the bullet points according to how the ideas relate to each other and Add a label such as (example), (builds on), (effect), (argument), (counter-argument) at the start of the bullet.  

Paste your dictated conversation into the chat window.

This prompt is great for using with an outliner (Logseq still works).