Look, I'm going to be honest with you. Six months ago, I was spending about £15 a week on ibuprofen and wrist supports. Not exactly the glamorous life of a freelance writer, is it?
I'd been ignoring the warning signs for years. That dull ache after a long writing session. The pins and needles when I woke up. My GP kept telling me to "take breaks" and "do stretches." Great advice, except deadlines don't really care about my tendons.
So I started looking into voice typing.
My first attempt was Windows Speech Recognition. Absolute disaster. I spent more time correcting mistakes than I would have typing. "The quick brown fox" became "The click round box." Gave up after two days.
Then I tried Dragon. You know, the one that costs about £700. My credit card still hasn't forgiven me. It was better, sure, but it needed constant internet connection and the subscription model meant I was haemorrhaging money every month. Plus, getting it to work with anything other than Word was a nightmare.
I'd pretty much resigned myself to a future of carpal tunnel when a mate sent me a link to PeekoType.
Here's what I wasn't expecting: it just worked.
No complicated setup. No cloud connection needed. No monthly fees draining my account. I installed it, pressed F9, and started talking. The text appeared in my Google Doc. Then in Slack. Then in my email. It didn't care what application I was using.
The accuracy genuinely surprised me. It's using something called Whisper (apparently the same tech behind ChatGPT's voice features), and it handles my Essex accent without constantly asking me to repeat myself. Even got "haemorrhaging" right on the first try, which is more than I can say for my own spelling.
Been using it for three months now. My wrists don't hurt anymore. I'm writing faster than I ever did with a keyboard. And I've got an extra £15 a week that isn't going to Boots.
If you're in the same boat I was, typing all day, ignoring the pain, wondering how long you can keep this up, maybe give voice typing a proper go. Not the rubbish built-in stuff. Something that actually works.
Your wrists will thank you.