Overcome Time Poverty with Voice Tech
Time constraints, like money constraints, affect individuals’ well-being. Everyone has 24 hours in a day, but some individuals have more control or flexibility over their time than others. Time poverty is often something most people are not even aware of.
Time poverty can be best defined as not having sufficient time for leisure and social activities due to the amount of necessary tasks like work an individual has to accomplish. Millions of people around the world report that they wish they had more discretionary time. Modern technologies enable an increased work pace, often resulting in more stress and sometimes burnout in the long run. In today’s society increased pace and darting from task to task is often misinterpreted as just being busy and even considered a sign of productivity and success. Yet being “time poor” affects our overall well-being, creativity, and productivity and should not be overlooked.
Here are a couple of things to start doing to overcome time poverty and getting things done:
Cut down on administrative tasks
Time poverty challenges both personal and professional lives. Juggling the demands of career and personal responsibilities people often feel like they are left with very little time to unwind and relax. However, by adopting the right technologies, we can easily accomplish a little more throughout the day thus having more time left in a day to engage in leisure activities. Employees across a variety of industries are tied up for hours with repetitive, administrative tasks. Healthcare professionals, for example, spend up to 2-4 hours a day creating reports. These tasks not only distract them from their core responsibilities, but also tend to result in constant multi-tasking and interruptions leading to increased time pressure while not getting things done efficiently.
Get work done on the go
Another aspect to consider is the time many employees around the world spend on commuting to work every day, averaging over 300 hours each year on a global scale. Employees with long commutes have a limited amount of time to spare for engaging in non-work related activities and more often report being time poor. Voice technology allows those traveling to work by car to complete tasks hands-free, solely relying on their voice. Why not create your to-do list first thing in the morning or better cross things off it? You can answer emails, prepare for your meetings, or record your ideas and task lists on the go. Once you get to the office, you can have your notes transcribed with speech recognition and are ready to take on the day.
Where voice technology can make a difference
Voice assistants have gained much popularity with the introduction of smartphones. Alexa, Siri and Google are more present in our daily lives than ever before due to their ability to control a wide variety of tasks hands-free – ranging from checking the weather, scheduling appointments, to creating to-do lists, among others. In the United States alone, the number of voice assistant users is increasing steadily. A study in 2017 found that 50% of smartphone users in the US rely on voice technology to perform searches at a minimum once a week and by 2022 an estimated 40% of the total population will turn to voice assistants at least on a monthly basis.
Apart from the benefits mentioned above, voice technology also has the ability to turn voice into text 3x times faster than typing with an accuracy of up to 99%. Furthermore, voicing your ideas and thoughts can help you sharpen short-term memory, improve your pronunciation and your overall speech quality.
Remember that we all have 24 hours
As prevalent as voice technology in our homes is today, many industries still have a tendency to underestimate its potential when it comes to increasing productivity in our professional lives. With new hybrid working options voice technology can support employees to work wherever they are, from home and on the go while transitioning back to the office. Smartphones have taught us how to type fast with our thumbs and now it’s time to put our voice to work!
Voice technology is the future of documentation.
Here’s how Philips SpeechLive might help:
- Make every minute count with all your recordings and transcriptions in the cloud.
- Immediately transcribe recordings through speech recognition.
- Easily access recordings and documents from multiple devices.
- Attach pictures to any of your recordings and easily share it with colleagues to collaborate from anywhere with an internet connection.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0920-z
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/overcome-time-poverty-and-become-productive_b_6192964