Do you flow?

Just spent a week in ceremony and nature. Some of it with friends. Some of it in total isolation. And contrary to what you might expect…

I'm not going to bestow upon you some grand life lesson I picked up while meditating in the woods.

Because the people who share these traditions with us have made tending to them a significant part of their day-to-day life, and as far as I'm concerned, that's where the real benefit comes from. Not from some one-off spiritual experience. It takes commitment to the craft, or the practice, or the person, or the path if you want to make any real progress.

But with that in mind, here’s something that might be useful for you.

One of the things I’ve made a long term commitment to in my life other than my super amazing girlfriend is writing these daily emails.

At first it felt hard, no… impossible. I was afraid to start because I might fail. Then with time, writing them became easier than not writing them. But that doesn’t change the fact they they take time out of my day to write and to write well. One thing that’s helped me with in particular over the past few months, which some avid readers have noticed, is the implementation of a particular tool into my writing process.

It’s just a simple dictation tool, nothing special.

But it transcribes fast. Saves it to local memory. Cleans up your transcripts according to your desired settings. And more or less learn you dictation style so it becomes more accurate over time.

And the reason I’m telling you all this is because of how it’s helped me with the daily email thing.

There were times where I felt like I barely had time to get through the first draft to get one of these emails out. But now all my first drafts are written 10x times faster through the power of long-winded, rambling, vocal dictation.

I just write it by thinking, pop it into Notion AI (which is trained on my writing style), and it does it’s best to structure what it thinks I was trying to say into a first draft, fairly close to the way I like to write and formulate new thoughts and ideas.

Then I come in and say, “No, no that’s wrong” and re-write the second draft.

But that's the part that made my writing, my thinking, and even my speaking improve over the past few months. It reminds me of something William Zinsser, who spent his life teaching other people how to write, said in his famous book, On Writing Well.

"Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost."

A lot of people are nervous about AI writing for them.

Myself included.

I’d never let AI publish something I didn’t write.

But I'm completely sold on dictating my first draft, letting AI format it, and then coming back to do the rewrite. I’ll slash things, take my voice back, say it the way I want to say it.

Same way you would after writing a crappy first draft.

If Zinsser is right (and I think he is), dictating your first draft might be one of the best ways to free up any resistance you have to sitting down and writing your daily email. Because a lot of people sit down to write, bang out a single sentence, and already they start editing themselves. Which is completely counter-productive to the writing process.

Well dictating removes all that.

It’s just thinking and talking. Then you see it in writing. You take the pen back and go, "No, that's not right…" and you cut and you refine. Anyway… like I said, I'm back. I'm feeling good. And one of the things that makes me feel good is including WisprFlow in my writing process.

First draft by voice. Second draft by keyboard. Then I hit send. And after trying all the other apps, this one just works better.

So if you already flow and you’re looking for something better, or if you’ve thought about it but you haven’t really tried it yet, use my link and we both get a month free.

https://kevinhood.me/wisprflow

Glad to be back and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Your pal,

Kevin Hood