As a physician, about the only thing I value more than time is my health, so I wanted to write a quick tip for physicians about how to combine these two values to maximize benefit.
This tip requires one skill and three tools.
The one skill is the ability to speak while walking. Let’s give that a big check.
Now, the first tool of three tools is a good pair of walking shoes.
Mine are an old pair of New Balance shoes. Check.
The second of the three tools is critical. It is a small handheld digital recorded recorder. Do not skip this test.
A handheld digital recorder is not an iPhone. It is also not an android.
Note and note this well. If you try to use a mobile phone as a digital recorder then it’s highly unlikely you will be successful.
The reason is simple. A digital recorder is designed with one purpose in mind which is to dictate on the go. As such, the physical design is small, and fits comfortably within two or three fingers of your hand. Also, it has only has two buttons: one for record/pause and one for stop.
In computer terms it has the perfect UI, user interface.
Your iPhone and Android does not have a good user interface for dictation – and if you use it as such you will struggle and fail.
Let’s move on to the final of the three tools: a piece of transcription and dictation software called Nuance.
This software is designed not just for dictation on your computer, which I occasionally use it for, but it’s also designed to transcribe MP3 files.
It’s so simple to use in this way it actually makes me giddy!
So do you have your one skill (talking) and your three tools together?
Okay let’s go.
- Choose a nice place to walk to. I usually pick a one hour loop walk with the good turnaround point. One hour is just about right for a single post.
- Choose an interesting topic you want to blog about before you walk out the door. For example my talk today is blogging while walking.
- Dictate while you blog using short sentences interspersed with the word. This is beneficial in two ways. It gives an actual conversational like flow to your blog because, well, it is. Have liberal use of the ‘new paragraph after each one or two sentences. this creates a nice amount of white space on your post which is been shown to be much more easy to read.
- When you get home plug the digital recorder into your iMac or equivalent.
- Drag-and-drop the MP3 file from your recorder folder and place it into the Nuance transcription folder.
- Hit the transcribe button. seven go to your French press and make yourself a cup of coffee as your dictation is being transcribed.
- As you sipping on your coffee go back to your computer and look for your beautifully transcribed post.
- Copy it and paste it into your word processor of choice and give it one good solid edit.
- Upload it to WordPress and publish it on your blog.
So that’s it.
With the right skills and tools and with an interest in an efficient way to combine exercise with blogging, you can easily integrate a very healthy activity with blog creation, resulting in efficient and fun use of your precious time.