The Drawback Of A Sudden Boost

Oct 19, 2007

Since most of my work involves writing — in fact all of my work involves writing — the realization that I could dictate using MS Word was a great boost. All you have to do is get hold of a microphone, attach it to your computer or your laptop and then train the dictation software bundled with MS Office and there you have it: you say and the word processor writes it. The more you train the dictation software the better it types. My productivity increased five times all of a sudden.

But in order to dictate you need quieter surroundings; if there are lots of noises around you the mic catches all those noises and then types them according to its own take on them. So I shifted to another room where I could close the door and do my work in silence. For the first few hours it was great. The problem started when I started using the dictation software even for writing shorter passages. Although it is a great tool, still the accuracy is anywhere between 85% and 95%. So while you’re dictating many times you have to make corrections. If it is a long document, say 1000 to 2000 words, then making repetitive corrections doesn’t seem to be a problem. But if you just have to write 100 or 200 words then it is better to type it rather than dictate it and I realized it after wasting lots of time.

Even shifting to a quieter room has so far turned out to be not-so-productive because I think I’m used to working in the sitting room, in the hub of all the activities. I think sitting in a separate room I thought I was working a lot but in fact I was not.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon the idea of working in a separate room and dictating instead of typing. If I implement these changes properly I think I can enhance my productivity significantly so I’m going to stick to them without getting distracted. And another thing, the dictation software is forcing me to improve my pronunciation because if I don’t pronounce the words right it doesn’t write them correctly :-). Right now I have a very bad pronunciation.