Save Years of Your Life by Speaking Up

Photography by Erik Witsoe

If someone told you that you could add a few years to the end of your life that you could spend with your family or doing the things you love…

Would you listen?

This is me doing that right now. There is something that I have discovered is an integral part of everyday life for so many people that can be managed in a much different way than what is the cultural norm.

It looks insane.

Talking into your phone while walking around, doing work, or driving might look absurd, especially to older generations. The same can be said for your laptop. Having a full on conversation with your laptop is not something that we are accustomed to.

They are going to teach children how to do that within the next ten years.

Those kids are then going to be able to write chapters of books in the amount of time that it took you to write a short essay. Any thought that comes to their mind they are going to speak out loud and it is going to be on paper. This will allow children to process what they are learning faster and also have more practice articulating their thoughts and making sure other people understand them.

So what can you do to make sure that the kid who has had access to all of humanity’s public information doesn’t overpass you?

You are going to have to learn.

I am 22 years old myself and I am realizing it would have been interesting to grow up a few decades later. My generation is using what will undeniably be outdated software in the years to come. So all of us are going to have to continuously adapt to the changes of the world so that we can best position ourselves to create. Otherwise, other people will run the race for you.

By utilizing the tools we have at our fingertips all of the tasks that you have throughout your day will start to take less time. The technology we have is here to make our lives easier and better, and we are the people responsible for making that our reality, not the technology.

You have Siri on your phone. But do you use it?

I will admit when it first came out it was not at the point that it is today. Nor is it near its full potential, it is only going to continue to bring more value to your life. Once your use of Siri becomes habitual, you will realize that you are going to be able to do the things you already do in much less time. It is up to you to use the extra time on your hands for something you value, but it is there to capture if you are willing to see the advantages it can bring to your life.

You will never search through your contacts again to try to find someone. You will never forget to send a message because it would have taken too long. You will be able to talk to more people and communicate more ideas than ever before. And you certainly will not be able to do it by typing everything by hand on your phone like you are used to.

Have you ever missed a meeting or appointment because you forgot to put it in your schedule? That is because if you have to go to the calendar app, make the event and set the time, this friction might get in the way of you scheduling all of the commitments you are making with other people. Now by saving this time you have an easy way to ensure your word is true.

There are things that you would be capable of doing that you might be unaware of. Let’s say you are driving, did you know you can have Siri read through all of your E-mails? Think of the amount of time that would be saved if throughout the short bits of your day you were able to do all of the things that once took you an entire workday.

These technologies have the potential to save us enough time to make this a reality. And on top of that, they will prevent us from being late. We have all done it. We underestimated the amount of time it would take to get somewhere or the traffic picked up in the wrong area and you showed up late. With smart devices, we are able to set up location-specific notifications that will enable us to understand how long it will take to get from each of our points on the calendar.

All of these things are worth looking insane for. Walking around talking to your phone is going to be something incredibly common in the future. Because the people who are not using it are going to be blatantly wasting their time. Imagine actually typing on your phone as the people who use two fingers to type. It is simply less effective.

Personally, I think all of these tools have the potential to save people so much time that they will shave years off of their life. The years that we would have spent as slaves to the machines that we use to make our lives more efficient. Now that we are getting smarter about the interfaces we use to operate them, it will make it so that we can return balance in our days.

No more missed appointments or forgotten phone calls. Gone are the days of having to worry about typing something long. Now we are only a quick conversation away from having it recorded digitally.

I am sitting here at my desk begging you to at least try to do this.

The only reason I am writing about is that it prospectively will revolutionize the way you live if you see the changes you will be able to make with your life.

I spend less time interacting with my devices. Every time I have a question i would have had to type into Google, I can just speak it out loud and immediately be presented with the answer. This frees you up to do whatever it was Googling would have interrupted you from doing.

Start small. Try it for 24 hours.

If in that amount of time you can’t pick up on how using a voice assistant can save you time, then at least you tried.

I have a feeling once you have your first day of reaching closer to your maximum potential you might reconsider typing out that next text.