Three hours a week, recovered by not typing
I have not typed most of my work in about two and a half months. I speak it.
The words land at over 180 words per minute. Hundreds of thousands of words and thousands of prompts, dictated rather than typed.
The setup
A podcast-quality microphone on a stand at my desk. One hot key. I hold it and speak, and the text appears wherever the cursor is.
That is the whole apparatus. No workflow to learn, no new application to live inside.
Why this is bigger than it sounds
Typing sits in front of almost everything else you do. Emails, briefs, notes, prompts, documents, messages. It is the interface between what you think and what leaves your desk.
Most people never question it because they learned it at twelve and it feels like a fixed cost. It is not fixed. It is a bottleneck you inherited.
The part that matters most
The tool matters less than the change in method.
Speaking produces more words, and it produces them in a different shape. Longer, looser, closer to how you would actually explain the thing to a person. For prompting in particular that is an advantage, because context is what makes a prompt work and typing punishes you for adding it.
How to test it in a week
1. Pick one category of writing
Prompts are the easiest place to start. The stakes are low and the volume is high.
2. Use a real microphone
Laptop microphones produce enough errors to make you quit. This is the one place the hardware matters.
3. Bind it to one key
If starting dictation takes three clicks, you will not use it.
4. Speak the way you would explain it
Do not compose sentences in your head first. That reintroduces the bottleneck you were removing.
5. Edit after, not during
Get it all out, then fix it. Editing while speaking halves the speed.
What this does not mean
It does not mean dictation is better for everything. Precise work, code, and anything with heavy formatting is still faster typed.
It also does not mean the transcription is perfect. It is not. It is good enough that fixing it costs less than typing it would have.
The decision
If your work is mostly writing, briefing, or prompting, this is worth twenty minutes of setup. Test it on prompts for one week before deciding.
Sources
- Jeff Fargo, Fargo Factor Insight: How to Make ChatGPT Emails Sound Like You
- Jeff Fargo, Fargo Factor Insight: My AI Command Doc Audits Every Workday
Transcript
Verbatim from the Fargo Walks clip, as recorded.
Thanks to Celebrity Poker Tour as my sponsor, and cameos by Brandy and Cookie Monster Fargo. So I have a platform I've been using for about two and a half months that is giving me over three hours of my time back every week, and take a look, here's the analytics. I'm typing at over 180 words per minute. I've dictated hundreds of thousands of words, thousands of prompts, and all I do is speak into, I have a Rode microphone, like a podcast quality microphone on a stand at my desk in my office, and I hit a hot button, the control key, and I speak. I don't type anymore. I don't type anything anymore. And I'm getting back hours. Hours of time. I cannot recommend this enough for you. Go forth.
Jeff Fargo is the founder of Fargo Factor and host of Fargo Talks. Fargo Factor advises established businesses on AI Search Authority, AI Decision Systems, and selective AI-enabled implementation.
WHEN THE DECISION MATTERS
Stop typing what you could say.
Fargo Factor helps established businesses find the small input changes that return hours every week, then stack them until the day looks different.
