I recently changed firms at my day job. The new place is a much further drive than I have had in some time.

I was talking with a friend about my current place of employment that I when I have to go to the office, I need to drive more than I have in a long time. It seems to be a real waste of time. To have this 45 minute period each way that I can’t really do anything with is wasteful. To be fair, I have listened to more news and more music, but there are days when I need more time and that seemed like a usable spot. He suggested that what I needed was a way to talk to notes – use a voice to text transcription tool of some sort. I could use that time driving productively by taking notes from my train of thought, then quickly editing the notes so that I could keep my stories and my blog moving along at a better pace.

Even if I only got a few hundred words, that would be a few hundred more than I had before.

This is not the fist time I’ve tried a tool like this – but this is the first time I’ve had specific time when I couldn’t do other things, or type at all. This was my first attempt with an app called Voice Notebook.

As with any voice to text app I’ve encountered in the past, the editing it the real challenge. I have managed to move the notes to a cloud drive and clean them up. We’ll see how this goes when I need to use it in the car (I cheated and tested this one while I was sitting at my desk in the office).