I can’t figure out how to write. Or, more accurately, I can’t figure out how to write what I think, how I think it, before I lose track of the thoughts. This problem has driven me crazy for years.
The core of my problem seems to be that the only time I have to process and think deeply is when I’m driving somewhere. Otherwise, I’m at work, church, or working on tasks at home. When I’m driving, everything I’m thinking and want to write about is clear. I just don’t know how to “save” any of it cohesively.
Now, you’re probably thinking “easy, just use a dicatation app, then have an LLM reformat it!” There are all sorts of devices and apps that exist to solve this problem. But for me, dicatation almost makes things worse. All of my thoughts happen in my head without really being translated thoroughly into words. And for some reason, I can much more easily translate my thoughts into words by writing them out with either pen or keyboard than trying to turn them into speech. Though an LLM might help to un-jumble the thoughts, what comes out is often very differet in both voice and content than what I originally envisioned.
This post was written with dictation, then manually edited, without LLM assistance.
Whenver I try to dictate what I’m thinking about in real time, what comes out sounds ridiculous. My words and thoughts and sentences jumble over each other as they fight to figure out which one is supposed to come first, in what order, and which will make sense to whoever I’m speaking to. The thoughts were non-linear, and converting them to sounds breaks the non-linearity.
Audience is another problem. When I’m speaking, I’m imagining my audience and trying to tailor what I’m saying to them. But when I have an idea, I’m talking to myself. If I’m talking to myself, I’m talking to myself. The context of what I’m trying to say only matters insofar as I need it. The words as they come out make sense to me, but when my ears hear them, they imagine an audience who is not me getting very confused by the lack of context.
When I write, I can write to myself. Then, I can look back and see my thoughts, reviewing, organizing, reorganizing, editing, drawing arrows and lines, crossing out words and adding new words, and edit on the fly in a very non-linear fashion. I can’t do that with my voice.
Solving this problem has been my obsession for years. (Well, one of many…) At some point I hope to document the various physical note taking systems I’ve tried to build.
My favorite is a set of physical note cards created by by hacking apart a TV and discovering that you could write and erase pencil on the diffuser film.
I’ve also tried a variety of ways of connecting tiny wireless keyboards to my phone that I could use while walking, or at my desk, trying to build a cheap writerdeck. But nothing ever worked because I can’t use a keyboard or look at a screen while driving.
I would love to know how people have solved this problem. You’re welcome to email me at josh at this domain if you want to write in with tips.