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Comment by andrei-akopian | Hacker News Reader

What are you guys writing that your thinking speed outperforms your writing speed to the point where you have to optimize your software and hardware?

In my (very minuscule) experience in writing 99% of the time is spent switching between browser, scratchpad, notes, and standing up to take a walk and think about it.

Start with the minimum possible format you can (plaintext) and step up a standard when necessary. The simpler the standard, the more software there is that just works with it.

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Settings > Accessibility > Slow Keys on MacOS. Turn that on and set the delay to maximum. Now, presumably there's a number that annoys you, and even though you spend most of your time switching between apps it will annoy you when you write. So if you get annoyed there, you must imagine that there is some bell curve of reaction speed. Absent any information, it's worthwhile to imagine you at the center, a pretty median slow guy. In that universe, there is some guy who will be three standard deviations faster. Just like you were annoyed when Slow Keys was on, he's annoyed when he's in the usual mode.

> In that universe, there is some guy who will be three standard deviations faster. Just like you were annoyed when Slow Keys was on, he's annoyed when he's in the usual mode.

Reminds me of how my son watches youtube at 2x all the time and probably would crank it up faster if there was a higher option.

Tell him about Enhancer for YouTube Chrome Extension, it can go past 2x.

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/enhancer-for-youtub...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/enhancer-for-...

And I totally agree with your son, YouTube and Podcasts are sometimes just slow or waste time with irrelevant/boring information, and changing the playback speed is a highly underrated way to deal with it. You do get used to 2x after a while.

I prefer the much simpler Video Speed Controller [0][1]. It works on YouTube, but also on every HTML5 video component on the web, including streaming platforms like Netflix/Prime/Disney+. No more wishing that a particular platform supported speed controls.

[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/videospeed/

[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/video-speed-control...

They did make it sound like a lot of work. Having done it a few times, I found it easier to write in a word processor. I prefer LibreOffice. I’ve also written in Markdown and HTML, but, for me, a word processor was easier because of the other items they mentioned needing. You can add front matter and Table of Contents easily in a word processor like LibreOffice.

In fact, I have a very short book about my step-by-step process on how to format and publish your own book with LibreOffice.

I recently wrote a blog post giving the cliff notes version of the book in a couple pages but I seem to have accidentally deleted it. I need to go dig it up.

I don’t think thinking speed outperforming writing speed is a necessary condition for wanting to optimize the software and hardware. Speed is rarely an issue.

I’d say ergonomics, organization of information, and the “feeling” of using the tools are the driving force behind all these efforts of optimizations.

It's definitely not about speed (I actually type slightly slower) but it is indeed about comfort

The blog post says they use plaintext (asciidoc)?

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