As our work lives begin to demand faster responses, deadlines become shorter and the need for our attention becomes spread across multiple projects and tasks, it’s imperative that our communication methods become more productive. Gone are the days of work communication taking place primarily through email. Instead, the adoption of instant chat platforms has become widespread, and for good reason too — it’s faster, more direct, and allows you to connect with anyone, at anytime. In addition, one of the biggest benefits instant chat platforms provide is the ability to send a voice message.
So when it comes to efficiency and communication, is it faster to type or talk?
Type or talk: you decide
Say you’re working on a project; you have few questions and looking to get some feedback on what you’ve produced. How long do you think it would take you to type out your message, craft it in a way that your question or response makes sense to the receiver, whilst also ensuring you cover everything off?
Maybe not very long, or maybe longer than you think. Either way, it would probably be a lot quicker to send a simple voice message.
Majority of people speak faster than they can type. If you want to get technical, using the English speaking language, the average person speaks about 130–160 words per minute in a standard conversation. However, the average person will only type about 40 words per minute. For anyone pressed with time, that’s a significant performance improvement that you should be utilising.
Why voice message connects us better
Aside from the notable speed and performance improvements that sending voice messages has over typing, it’s also worth reflecting on the unique capability of voice to convey meaning to other humans that written text simply cannot.
Voice gives us insight into the emotion associated with communication. It allows us to speak with empathy, excitement and passion. We’ve all been in a situation where our message has been misinterpreted, a joke has been taken as sarcastic and rude, or a simple short message has been received as abrupt and inhumane.
Regardless, voice messaging allows us to communicate effectively, by including human emotion to help us connect better than any written email or message could provide.
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