There are authors who write their books by hand. With a pen or pencil. Until the industrial age this was the only way

Writing by hand can help with creativity and maybe there are times when you would benefit from this. Many, many years ago I wrote a novel. The first draft was written by hand. Typing it into my computer was the first stage of editing: not every word or sentence made it into the computer file.

Realistically, though, when it comes to work communications we write at a keyboard. We’ve learned to type — perhaps not as fast as a typist but faster than we could write by hand. But why?

We can speak faster than we can write or type. Computers and smart phones now come with the built-in ability to transcribe our voices to text. Using it will get the first draft of a document written much more quickly. You can probably type 40-50 words per minute. Speech recognition software can do 150 words per minute. That report that took you 30 minutes to type could have been done in 10. You can work through your email inbox in a third of the time.

At first you will make mistakes and so will your device but both you and the machine will learn. When I correct spellings on my phone the software seems to learn the word and get it right. The latest version of Apple’s software puts in punctuation without me having to tell it.

I’ve found that it is best to keep going even if you can see the transcribed text is wrong. Sometimes the device will correct the text after a few more words because it can work out the context and make a better guess at what you said.

What are you waiting for? Get writing with your voice. I recommend you on your start small with text messages and short emails and build up to longer documents.