Here's a quick question for you. What percentage of your time working on your computer do you spend typing versus talking? If your answer is something like ninety five percent typing, five percent talking, or maybe zero percent talking, you are leaving some big productivity gains on the table because talking is faster, It gets ideas out before your analytical brain starts second guessing them, and for most tasks, it produces better first drafts than anything near labor over at a keyboard.
Yet when Neil and I ask audiences this question, almost everyone is still close to one hundred percent typing. So today we're going to get into why voice should be a core part of your workflow, not just a novelty.
We are going to cover when talking beats typing and also when it doesn't, the difference between dictation mode and advanced voice mode in your AI tools and this big software we both rely on day to day to do this, and by the end of this episode you are going to have a very clear picture of where to start and probably a new piece of software to try out before the week is over. Welcome to how IAI with me Doctor Amantha Imber and Neo Applin, head of Inventium AI.
Each episode we share one practical way to use AI better at work and in life. No fluff, no dech jargon, just things you can use straight away.
Somantha, the world of work has changed, particularly the way we work with our computers has changed over the times, and we've got AI and all these kind of things are now available to us. But question for you, what's the thing that's changed the most in the way that you work with your computer in the last couple of years.
The biggest change by far of how I interact not just with AI, but also with my computer, is that I have gone from typing being how I interact with my AI and computer being the predominant way to I would say ninety percent of my interaction when I'm working with just me and my AI or me and my computer is through talking to it, like blah blah talk talk rather than type. So about ten percent of what I would do on the computer is typing, ninety percent is talking.
That's a huge change.
It is absolutely massive, and it has made me so much faster and so much more effective. And I also think in the age of AI, where so much of our written communications sounds very aified like as one example, like one use case from my life, any almost any email that I write, except for quite lengthy ones that need a lot of content summarization or documenting something. But like when I'm just sending a much less complex email to someone will I will talk it out and then
it will appear through dictation software on my computer. And I feel that that sets me apart from the vast majority of people who are using AI to write their emails. What do you reckon it is for your workflows?
I would say it's probably eighty twenty eighty typing, twenty percent voice. Now I'm late to the voice game, and I see you as inspiration on trying to get further up there. For me, it's about different use cases on how and why I need to type versus when I need to talk, And I'll explain that in a minute.
But for me, it's it's all that speed. And I can see why people are getting AI to write their emails because it's faster for me to give you five dot points typing slow typing, and then saying, write the rest of this email. So that probably takes I don't know, let's say thirty seconds, maybe a minute something like that. I write my five top points. I typed them and then I get to clean it up. But if you're talking that, it'll probably take you that at the same time.
So I can see the time saving of using AI. I can see the benefit of using our own voice to be able to write those things. And so yeah, using dictation software, I'm getting more and more into But it's great for those kind of things. But questions for you, manthe you're using a lot of the times, when are you using what purposes are you thinking there's the best for versus when you would be typing.
For So I use it for something I've been using it for for quite a long time, like at least a year, probably longer though is I will often go for a walk with my AI and I will talk to it, particularly when I'm trying to nut through a problem. And you know, Neo, you've built various GPTs and agents for Inventium that will help tease out creative solutions to problems. We've got our Brainstorm Buddy GPT, which I definitely use quite a lot. So I will often go for a
walk with my AI, not through a problem. Certainly when I was working on the Energy Game book, I would go for I would say daily walks when I was trying to nut through the structure of the book and also the mechanics of the game that I was trying to design. That would just be a daily thing for me. So that's been in my workflow for quite some time. But in terms of when I'm at my computer in my inbox, I use it all the time. There's not too many emails except for the more complex ones that
I'm using AI to write with me. But gosh, it's really it's anything. It's anything from like when I'm sending text messages to people, I will always talk those rather than type those with my phone because I've also got dictation software on my phone. I'm talking things. If I am labeling a file, I will talk out the label rather than type it. Like it's literally everything except for some very specific use cases where I think that typing
is still superior. And what I think because I mean, we both do a lot of keynote speaking on AI, and something I've been asking a lot of the audiences that I've been in front of late is what percentage of the time of people talking versus typing to their computer and specifically their AI and I'm still finding that most people are at pretty close to one hundred percent typing, and there's just there's so much to be gained, Like you know, just as a very quick example, I mean,
the average person I think maybe types it about fifty or sixty words per minute.
I think that feels about right. But you've also got then the error rates on top of that, so you've got to go. You can type fast, but you get fixed mistakes, so it's probably average of forty words a minute effectively.
That's so true. And for talking, I know that I talk quite fast, but I talk at about one hundred and forty words per minute, and so look at that, like it's almost three times as fast as you know for me to talk rather than type.
There's also another part of that, which is science. This is one of the things we've been talking and our in your keynote, which is when you're just talking, you're using a different part of your brain than if you're typing. Typing is very analytical and things like that. You're getting your brain and involved. They call it a prefrontal interference, whereas if you're just talking, that prefrontal inference is not there.
You're not critiquing yourself so much as just getting out from the heart to be able to get those things out, and so your ideas will flow faster by talking than it would be from typing.
And now let's get into when should we talk versus when should we type? Because at Inventium AI we've got very clear views on this. So Neo, when should people be talking and when should they be typing to their AI slash computer.
This is up to you as well, but we've got this. We're a bit opinionated in these things. But talking is so much better for idea generation. So as Amantha said, when you were when you're chatting to yourself, when you go through the walk, all that kind of stuff, those are great to be able to just talk it out. You're not getting your analytical brain in the way. Same thing things with like exploratory thinking, like what's this going to do? Looking at ideas, options, strategies, things like that.
Another part is anything like emotional or autobiographical like what do I think about this? Or or you know you're getting down a personal letter or something like that. Then very very much I would be using the dictation. I'd also say that small bites are great for dictation. So renaming a file name, for example, that's a really easy one. You're changing the title of a document easy as well.
And I would say on that giving instructions is also a lot to talk out. So for example, if I'm prompting my AI or getting it to work through something, it is much more natural for someone to talk through those instructions because we're really used to giving people instructions in our lives, particularly if you've got children, and so that is a really natural one and a really good use case for talking rather than typing.
And where I use typing, this is why I'm more eighty percent than you, which is the other way around. Adding thoughts to existing work, editing precision or logical structure type stuff, you're much better off typing. I do an awful lot of presentation decks, and so there's like graphic design plus typing, and I find that just with number of the keys and keys and keyboards and things like that, I do find I do a lot more typing for those types of things as well. So yeah, analytical stuff
maybe typing maybe better. But I'm finding I'm doing a up lend now and getting down my first draft using voice and then I'm going through and editing with typing. So it's a good one two punch.
Okay, Now let's talk about the tools and also the functions within the tools. So let's first talk about the AI tools like Copilot, Chatchipt, Claude, Gemini the most common ones. So how can people talk like? What do those little buttons look like? How do they unlock voice?
Yep, the different tools have different buttons on there. Just on the normal prompt window, you'll see that there's a little microphone. The microphone is dictation, and there's an little one looks like a squiggly waveform, and that one's Advanced voice mode. Now not all of them have the Advance Worice mode, but the dictation's on. I'm pretty much all of them.
I think.
So dictation is great if you just want to get your thoughts down uninterrupted. It just basically transcribes everything you say, ums ers, all those kind of things are captured in there as well, and that's great where you've just got an idea stream of consciousness, get my thoughts down. Advance Worice mode is great when you want to have a chat via your mouth with AI. You talked to it. It talks to you. It's not writing on the screen so much. Well it does that as well, but it's
just talking to you. And both are great for different things like if you've got ideation you want to get throw ideas around, I'd use the advance voice mode. If you want to get your first draft of thoughts down, like a brain dump, then absolutely I would be using the dictation mode on that. And so that's available on the mainscreen tools. But the other tools that you use are quite different.
Yes, So my main go to tool, which would be software like aside from the standard software like PowerPoint and Word and Chrome or Brave as our brows, this would be the software that if you were to say, okay, this software is now taken off your computer, I would be sobbing in the corner, curled up in a ball. So this is whisper flow, and I want to get the spelling right, so it's wisp r flow. Two words, and this is I've tested quite a lot of software,
this is by far the most accurate and useful. So that's an important combination accurate plus useful for dictation software. It's accurate. I think we all know what accurate means. But useful. What it does is if I am talking and then I'm like, actually, no, sorry, this and blah blah blah, so it will auto correct mistakes that I make.
It will also remove filler words like um and ah, and it will also auto punctuate, like if it can see that I am like first, do this, second, do this, third, do that, it will automatically put those in numbers or bullet points, depending on what it sounds like. My intent is. It's very good at understanding that. And really the only problem that I've found is that it still sometimes uses
American spelling. So I will always proof freed anything that I do dictate in, you know, if it's something that will be read by others, like an email for example. But I have found that it is leagues above anything else I have tried.
I have tried others because you know, I like to try different pieces of software. First off, I love whisper flow. It is great and you can set the shortcut on your keyboard and you just press that button, you talk into your microphone and you're often running. It then places that text anywhere, which I love. So you don't have to go to the whisper flow app. You are using whichever app you are already in. You press the button and it then just types for you, and I love that.
It's a seamless the way it works. Some of the others you have to go and dictate to the app and then you cut and paste, which can be a bit clunky. Too much trouble, too much trouble. But yeah, whisper Flow for the accuracy, the formatting, and for the auto correcting is awesome. Some of the others that I've used, open Whisper, I've had a bit of a play with. I'm looking at another one at the moment called where are we Let me just get it up. Mac Whisper
is another one, and I'm quite enjoying mac Whisper. It's a more open source kind, actually not open it's free. There we have there's a paid version and a free version. It's not quite as good as whisper Flow, but for the price you're paying, it's excellent. The price you're paying of zero, yeah, exactly for the Windows people out there. One I've seen is called a Brainier. I've never never
actually played with Brady yet. But ultimately, none of these in you because one spit of software I was using back in two thousand and one was Dragon naturally speaking for those who are in those kind of words. But you can add them to your work day, and there's lots of them out there. As much as I love whisper flow, and i've if you can't be bother trying them all, try whisper flow, like it is far and
away better than the others. But what I do like seeing is there's a a bunch of different software out there, so it's not just a one and done. You can do things where you can run all of the software on your computer so your voice doesn't go to the cloud, so therefore it's nice and safe and it's a cure and things like that. So there are local models you can try. Are the ones that you can play around with.
Maybe the interfaces be different than you want. Some of the other features you might have there, which might be I can upload it to an audio file, maybe a voice memo and all then transcribe that as well. So all these different features, but they can help you in different ways.
So I hope that you are now feeling inspired to change your workflow. If you are someone that is doing majority typing to your computer, maybe you'll try talking to it today and if you know someone, maybe you sit next to someone that's just like a hardcore typer and you never hear them talking to their computer, maybe share this episode with them for a little bit of inspiration. How AI was hosted by me Amantha Imber and Neo Applan.
A big thank you Martin Imber who does our sound editing, and Jim Rubio for production support, and thank you to John Kilby who composed the theme music.