If you have to write 500 words or more, it always pays to dictate it. And then to get it transcribed.

There’s a referral link here for Otter.ai , but in truth it is just one of many good solutions.

Why don’t we do this more often? I think there's a very simple reason. Most of us are blind to the fact that we can speak perhaps 10 times faster than we can type. And also it takes a bit of practice.

I have often remarked in the past that human perception, particularly about speed, is remarkably relativistic. For instance 40 mph in a boat or on a bicycle feels very fast, whereas driving at 40 mph in a car is hardly a white-knuckle experience.

So we never really compare our speed of typing to our speed of speaking. They exist into separate perceptual domains. Typing fast means “typing faster than you usually type”. We do not compare it to the speed of speech. It only takes a moment to experimentation to realize that, unless you are an exceptionally good typist, most of us can mouth words ten times faster than we can tap them onto a keyboard.

In fact if you ever met someone who spoke at the same pace that you generally type, after two or three sentences, you would find them intolerable company.

Yes it's true that you can't speak as eloquently as you can write.But the time you save through voice dictation frees up a huge swathe of free time to spend on editing, which is a high-added value activity, compared to typing the bloody words in in the first place. Voice dictation, even if quite a lot of what you say is more less rubbish, is also a very good way to overcome writers block. At least you've made a start.

Frankly it drives me nuts that email software mostly does not offer a speak to type option, as replying to 60 emails becomes extraordinarily tedious when you have to type a reply to each one.

Now that we are frequently working at home, a spoken audio version of email might even make rather good sense.But since the pace of progress in improving email software proceeds at the pace of plate tectonics, I'm not holding my breath.

The Alchemist from Rory Sutherland

Top tip: voice dictation.