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(You can listen to the audio of the article too. Click here: How to speed up answering e-mail)
Here's how I leave messages on an answer phone.
Hi, this is Sean. Full stop. I wanted to let you know that we might meet tomorrow, comma, and then meet again next week, em dash, but only if you're okay with it, full stop.
You probably noticed there are lots of punctuation marks in the sentence, and that too on an audio message. This odd behaviour began when I began using dictation for most of my communications. For a while, I had no choice. At one point, I lost a lot of weight, which put enormous pressure on my tailbone.
For a whole year, I couldn't sit down at my desk at all and was forced to dictate.
Yet, the experience of dictating was extremely frustrating. I use an iPhone and a Mac, and we are in 2026, but dictation, in particular, works worse than it did around 2010. Back in 2010, a program called Dragon NaturallySpeaking existed, which did an excellent job of enabling anyone to dictate quickly and, most importantly, accurately.
Then things changed—for the worse, and flawless dictation was back.
If there's one tool that I'd recommend for 2026 and beyond, it's Wispr Flow.
It's a normal dictation program, but what's very normal about it is that it makes no mistakes. The Mac or the iPhone may make an error only 3% of the time, but to find those 3 errors, I have to scan 97 additional words. With Wispr Flow, the only time I've ever had a problem was when I was lazy with my speech. If I speak normally and reasonably clearly, it transcribes my words correctly 100% of the time.
The funny thing is that I don't even have to speak loudly. Wispr Flow works even when you are literally breathing into the phone. This means you could be at a meeting and make lots of notes, or you could be in a crowded room and still have an absolutely accurate transcription.
And unlike the earlier method, where I had to manually add punctuation, Wispr Flow adds it wherever applicable.
It even makes lists, so I could have something like “Go to the market, buy some tomatoes, bring them home,” and it will list it for me without me having to create bullet points.
Wispr Flow has already saved me dozens of hours in the early weeks of January. When I am chatting with my friends on WhatsApp or another app like Messenger, I can very quickly dictate, and while they are still fiddling with their keyboard, I have finished dictating half a book.
But as I head back to work and have to deal with dozens of emails, that is where Wispr Flow helps tremendously.
That's because I can answer emails in enormous detail; writing the same email would take me 5-6 minutes, but I can do it in under 30 seconds with Wispr Flow. Since we conduct courses, there are also regular assessments. Once again, clients love it when you give them lots of detail. On any given day, I might have to deal with about 200 comments, and this quickly adds up to 3-4 hours of typing.
All of this is not because I want to be more productive; instead, it is a method that saves you from wasting needless time and mostly energy.
If you spend several hours a day fiddling around with the keyboard, then those are the hours that you could spend sleeping, with your family, or just sitting around doing absolutely nothing at a cafe. Productivity by itself is pointless because if all the productive tools make you scratch that, end up with you doing more work, then that's kind of a dead end. But if the productivity helps you waste more time, then that's why these tools were designed in the first place
Wispr Flow is not flawless.
• The list doesn't always work despite my best intentions
• It's possible that I will work it out as I go along
It also fails to put a full stop at the end of every sentence because it's trying to detect whether you finished your thought or not. If the thought seems a little incomplete or your speaking suggests you need to move forward, it just stops suddenly without the proper full stop.
Other than that, it is a fabulous tool and something that I cannot do without.
Even though I've been using it for just five or six weeks, the accuracy is so great that it switches between languages just as easily as someone speaking. I can say “¿Dónde está su coche?” and the app will write it correctly in the language. Est-ce assez grand pour toi? I don't have to stop mid-stride because it recognises that I am speaking another language. This means that I could switch between about a hundred different languages, and it would flawlessly pick up the information and insert the correct grammar.
Probably the best part is that if you change your mind while speaking, it will pick up the last idea you used. For instance, if you were to say something like, “Let's meet at 7:30. Or rather, let's meet at 8:30 instead,” it would avoid the incorrect timing and simply convey the message you intended after all.
I know this message is just for those who use the Mac and iPhone, which means it is restricted to the Apple environment. I don't know of any Android-driven software that does the same activity. However, if you use the Mac or the iPhone, I would very strongly suggest that you try this tool out because you will be hooked within less than a day.
Renuka was a little sceptical about it.
I installed it on her phone, and she has already started using it consistently and is now keen to have it on her computer as well. If you really want to be productive and spend more time doing absolutely nothing, I suggest you try this tool right away. There is a coupon code at the bottom that gives you a month free. And if you continue, it gives me a month free as well. I don't get paid for it.
Check out the link below and judge for yourself. I think you will be quite amazed at how cool this software turns out to be for your day-to-day activities, and for any messages, chats, or even social media, if that's what you are into.
I might still use commas and full stops when I leave a message on the answer phone. That's going to be a hard habit to break. But who knows? Maybe I'll change in 2026, once and for all. And so will you.
Here’s the link for the free month:
Try it. I've been using it for messages and for lots of other work.
It's far, far superior than Siri and makes no mistakes.
You can listen to the audio too. Click here: How to speed up answering e-mail
