How to use Google Docs and Google Voice to draft your content
If you’re like me you probably don’t have tons of time to sit down write lots of content.
There just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to get everything that needs to be done, done.
I also find it harder to get those fingers going as fast as my brain can come up with ideas. When I type, it sometimes results in ideas disappearing out of my brain, never to return and be put on the page.
Over the last few months, I’ve started to turn out a ton of content. My secret sauce, Google Docs, and Google Voice.
If you have Google Docs which is free with any Gmail account or if you use the GSuite you have it as well.
One of the best features of Google Docs is Google Voice. You can simply talk into your smartphone or into your computer and Google just types out what you’re saying.
This post right now is being completely written by my voice. I’m simply talking into my phone, it’s typing it out and all I’m going to do when I’m done with this is a simple editing process to clean up spelling, punctuation and my sentences to make it ready for publishing. Start to finish, this post took me less than 30 minutes to draft, edit, find a picture and publish.
The speed of thought
I find that I can talk my ideas through a lot faster than actually typing them. Google Voice gives me a great tool in being able to just simply talk away and get all my ideas out of my head and onto the page.
This is one of my most invaluable tools. It just simply works and getting huge amounts of content completed can be done in mere minutes rather than staring at a blank screen trying to type as fast as mythoughts come out.
Getting Started
To do this you need a quiet place and you need a place where your stream of thoughts can just come out get onto the page as quickly as possible. I suggest either finding a quiet room or going for a walk with a headset and just letting your thoughts flow. Don’t worry about anything else but ideas flowing out of your brain through your mouth.
Don’t worry about punctuation, spelling or anything. Just get the thoughts out and the rest can be dealt with in your editing process later.
How to use Google Voice in Google docs
Accessing this awesome tool is easy. Open a new Google Doc, click on the Tools menu and then click on Voice Typing. A little microphone widget will pop up, click on it and start talking. Your words will start to appear on the page and that’s it.
Try it out and play around with it. You will love it once you see it’s powers.
Couple of tips
It’s that simple to use and as you practice, Google Voice will get better at understanding you.
Here are a couple of tips I have learned.
- Speak clearly, at a normal volume and pace. Don’t yell and try and keep your environmental noise to a minimum.
- Try to speak in short clear sentences. This will help as you ramble on to keep your content clean and easily editable.
- You can say “New Line” or “Enter” to move the cursor down a line.
- To edit your document, you can say these commands: Copy, Cut, Paste, Delete, Delete last word and many others
- This is not just reserved for Google Docs. You can use this is Sheets and virtually any doc that requires you to type.
For a whole bunch of other commands, you can use, Check out the Type With Your Voice FAQ.
One last thing
I’ve installed GBoard on my smartphone. This is Google’s Keyboard for Android devices and it installs google voice right on the keyboard so you can use Voice to Text for everything from SMS to WordPress and anything that requires you to enter text. Get it and you will have all the voice to text powers you need in the palm of your hand.