Found a weird trick that saved my news article research time by half

I cover local city council meetings for a small news site and was drowning in transcripts. Last month I started using voice-to-text on my phone to dictate quick summaries while I drive home. It sounds dumb but it cuts my post-meeting writeup time from 3 hours to like 90 minutes. The trick is to speak in bullet points not full sentences and fix grammar later. Has anyone else found a weird shortcut that actually works for digging into the full story behind local headlines?

3 comments

3 Comments

miasanchez7d ago

ok but like... is saving 90 minutes really that deep? i mean yeah it's a neat trick but you're still spending an hour and a half on this stuff, not exactly a game changer.

the_jake7d ago

Used to feel the same way, this actually changed my mind.

green.iris7d ago

Wait, did you actually try it or are you just guessing? I used to think the same way, like "eh, an hour and a half still sucks." But then I realized I was spending way more time than that just scrambling to decide what to make or staring at my fridge. Once I actually sat down and planned out a week's worth of meals, it cut down my grocery trips too, so I wasn't running to the store every other day. Now that hour and a half feels like nothing compared to the time I used to waste messing around with takeout orders.