(2025-09-02) I Started Talking To My Computer Instead Of Typing It Changed How I Think

Katie Parrott: I Started Talking to My Computer Instead of Typing. It Changed How I Think. I didn’t notice how much typing slowed my thoughts down until I realized I’d stopped.

On the surface, nothing about typing feels laborious—I’ve been doing it since I was a fifth-grade Mavis Beacon all-star. I average 120 words per minute talking; I can hit that while typing if I focus really hard on my fingers. There are tiny frictions that slow me down, micro-decisions about phrasing and punctuation and rhythm

First, there’s my Working Overtime workspace, a ChatGPT project I have set up to help me brainstorm ideas, do research, and flesh out drafts for my column. Then there’s Monologue, the AI-powered transcription app that Naveen Naidu Mummana, entrepreneur in residence at Every, is building (it’s currently in public beta). I just press a key to talk; Monologue relays the message; the alien superintelligence inside my project tells me what it “thinks.”

ChatGPT has its own built-in voice-to-text mode, and there are other popular voice dictation tools on the market, like Whispr Flow. But I found frustrations with each: The dictation lags, or the output is unclear, or opening the app slows down my computer to the point where I can’t use it. Using Monologue paired with ChatGPT was the first time that talking to my computer felt like the evangelists promised it would: easy.

Once I stopped treating the keyboard as my only entry point, the whole shape of my work changed: Ideas flow faster, structure emerges in conversation, and clarity comes from rounds and rounds of “How’s this?” and “What about that?” If you haven’t tried talking to your computer yet, I highly recommend it. Let me tell you why. (conversational interface)

Building agents is no longer just for engineers

Here’s how it looks in practice. I open a fresh chat inside my project and say, “I have an idea for a Working Overtime essay about talking to my computer instead of typing and how it’s changed the ergonomics of my work.”

Monologue catches my words and transcribes them into ChatGPT (cleaned up for stammers and false starts, which is nice). I hit enter, my project thinks for a second, and returns a potential outline and two follow-up questions. I say, “This is close—keep the idea of ergonomics.” It generates a new response based on that nudge. Five rounds of back-and-forth later, I have an outline and an opening paragraph

I feel like Don Draper on Mad Men, leaning back and rattling off notes for Joan to type up.

I have an always-online co-worker—several, in fact

All of these projects have documents uploaded to their project files that provide context for how I use that specific system, as well as custom instructions that instruct the project on how it should behave. The Working Overtime project “talks” back like an editorial assistant. The Every editor pushes back on weak stakes and lack of payoff. My career coach provides feedback when my impostor syndrome gets out of control.

What makes this mode so different is the way it loosens the grip of the keyboard on the thought process. When I type, I’m always self-editing—backspacing, rephrasing, or policing awkward syntax. When I talk, the ideas tumble out in real time. It’s less linear, but that turns out to be great for brainstorming.

I find myself digging into the nuances and complexities of ideas more than I did when a chunk of my mental bandwidth was eaten up by cranking out the draft.

The collaboration comes with a trade-off, though. The same setup that makes work feel effortless also tempts me into letting it spill further into my weekends

The lesson isn’t to clamp down on myself and keep weekends sacred. Rather, it’s to recognize that this new way of working requires a renegotiation of my boundaries. Talking to machines makes work feel playful again, in a way it hasn’t since I worked in a physical office where I could peek my head over my monitor and go back and forth with a co-worker about a project we were both working on.

there’s value in slowing down and thinking things through word by word. Clear writing is clear thinking, as many a round of revisions has taught me. I still do that thinking, but the timing of when I do it has shifted from before the words exist to after I’ve blurted them out.