I am of course not typing this column. I try my best not to type, ever. Certainly, when at my desk I try to use voice recognition.  Plus, I love being able to talk through text messaging and emails on my phone. Heck, in a pinch I can even do this column on my phone. So yes, typing really is, in my mind, "quaint." And while quaint describes things that possess an old-fashioned attractiveness or charm - something that is unusual or interesting or amusing none of those adjectives fit well in the workplace.

For those of you who have and are not convinced that using something like Dragon NaturallySpeaking is the way to go, I encourage you to look at some of the most current stats. According to some sources the average worker spends nearly 4 hours a day typing e-mails and other communications at an average speed of 33 words per minute, that's really just one word every 2 seconds.  Now compare that to dictation software, which easily records 100-130 words a minute. The math looks pretty convincing to me. I mean what if you could free up an extra three hours a day because you can work three times as fast? Would you at least give it a shot?  

The good news is that the algorithms that the software companies use are getting better and better. And one of the reasons it works so well is that in the English language just 300 words make up 65% of all written material. Another one of the reasons it's improving is because there is so much "talk" to work with. Every day more and more voices are coming in and believe it or not people say the same things over and over which enables the algorithms to be more and more powerful. Now of course, it's not just the words that have to be learned, the software has to figure out what is ambient noise and deal with information about the linguistic context;  we humans do it all the time, but it is a little harder for computers. I knew my software had taken a big step forward when it would automatically stop the time I had one of my sneezing fits!

And do me a favor, please don't think about perfect. Just think about being better and faster than you are now. In many ways it comes down to one of my favorite and probably your favorite truisms known as the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule - 20% effort produces 80% of the results. Voice recognition software doesn't have to learn 100% to be effective and you don't have to use it 100% of the time to be effective. 

If you implement dictation company wide, you'll notice that some people get much more out of it than others. Bottom line is everybody's going to get something out of it. And it's important to have the right expectations about learning curves depending what the employee does for most of their working hours. I also found the one big help is something that I'm trying to get better at, which is using language and stop being so mouse driven. When I think about how many times I visit certain websites, three times that for Google searches is how many times I open an e-mail and I recognize that with a little training I could do it a lot faster than grabbing the mouse. I know intuitively that Dragon can perform many of these tasks faster than a conventional mouse and keyboard and I fall into the category of not taking full advantage. 

The only time I have some difficulty with voice recognition dictation is when I'm trying to multi task a little too much. Switching between e-mails, working in our customer relationship management software and answering incoming phone calls and questions from coworkers, gets a little nerve-racking. Wearing a headset that switches from phone to voice dictation is certainly key. Bottom line is, voice dictation is good enough to make it a super valuable tool and it's only going to get better. I hope you'll try it and leave "quaint" for things that don't negatively impact your pocketbook. We don't have all the answers, but if you're interested in the exact setup we use, just drop me an e-mail.

Come join our discussion on our blog, or I welcome your feedback through email.