GRRM: How do you write so many books?... Don't you ever spend hours staring at the page, agonizing over which of two words to use, and asking 'am I actually any good at this?'

SK: Of course! But not when I'm writing.

In either case, different strokes for different folks, and what ultimately matters is whether you get good results. I think the upside is high, so I broadly suggest people try it out

In principle I don't see why they should have different amounts of thought. That'd be bounded by how much time it takes to produce the message, I think. Typing permits backtracking via editing, but speaking permits 'semantic backtracking' which isn't equivalent but definitely can do similar things. Language is powerful.

And importantly, to backtrack in visual media I tend to need to re-saccade through the text with physical eye motions, whereas with audio my brain just has an internal buffer I know at the speed of thought.

Typed messages might have higher _density_ of thought per token, though how valuable is that really, in LLM contexts? There are diminishing returns on how perfect you can get a prompt.

Also, audio permits a higher bandwidth mode: one can scan and speak at the same time.

And your 5 minute prompt just turned I to 1/2 hour of typing

With voice you get on with it, and then start iterating, getting Claude to plan with you.

Not been impressed with agentic coding myself so far, but I did notice that using voice works a lot better imo, keeping me focused on getting on with letting the agent do the work.

I've also found it good for stopping me doing the same thing in slack messages. I ramble my general essay to ChatGPT/Claude, get them to summarize rewrite a few lines in my own voice. Stops me spending an hour crafting a slack message and tends to soften it.