Day Two: Training my Dragon

So while I am completely excited about my 30 day challenge, I am overwhelmed by the shear amount of work and travel I will be doing in the next month.

For me, one of the best ways to make sure a new behavior sticks is to have a plan. During my weight loss journey it has been imperative for me to pre-plan food for an entire week. I set up outlook reminders and a keep full inventory of gym clothes at work to make sure that I stay active among long days of research and analysis. For me having a plan is a major factor to my success, and any disruption to my plan (like multi-city travel) can throw a major monkey-wrench in reaching my goals.

So how am I going to write for 30 days when I know that I will be traveling for at least half of them? I have a secret weapon…I have a pet Dragon!

I recently got myself Nuance’s- Dragon Naturally Speaking. This is a program for my computer that comes with a microphone/headset which allows me to speak my thoughts while Dragon types what I say. I originally bought my Dragon to help transcribe field research videos, but find myself using him every day for lots of different tasks. Don’t get me wrong…Dragon and I are still getting to know each other. He hates it when I swear, and while he always spells every word correctly he gets caught up on homophones. Most of our issues are totally my fault though.  If you know me you know I talk waaaay to fast. Also being a consultant means that he is never going to get used to my jargon, last week I was talking to him about blood analysis, this week we are talking about robots…and touchy feely goal setting. But all in all we are hitting our stride.

While he is not perfect, my Dragon is opening new doors for me. You see, I am dyslexic which has always made writing incredibly challenging for me. I feel like I am a pretty good story teller, but could never hit a flow with writing because the little red squiggles under half of my document would drive me crazy. With Dragon, I can just say what I am thinking, he types, and I edit later.

So Dragon is going to help me take on this 30 day challenge…and eventually probably help me take over the world. I have created a ridiculous set up for myself so I can dictate to my Dragon on my morning commute. I have a computer plugged into my cigarette lighter, and my Dragon headset plugged into my computer. I talk in sort of a stream of consciousness flow to rough out my post on my drive to work, edit during lunch, and rough out an outline for tomorrow’s post on my drive home.

Has anyone else found tools for making writing (or any goal setting) easier or more efficient?

If you are interested you can check out Dragon here: http://tinyurl.com/c2vhgao. They are doing a pretty good sale right now.

Comments

[Paul Werner]

Dragon is definitely pretty awesome. I got to test with it when one of our HR reps broke her elbow and needed it for work. I never thought about using it in the car, but I might now.

Oh, and congrats on making it 6.67% (rounded) of the way through your challenge.

[Beth Werner]

Hi Paul!

Thanks for the encouragement! I am pretty sure that Dragon will let you use your iphone as a remote for capturing notes in the car, but having a Droid means creating a cockpit for me!

Thanks,
Beth