How To Banish Forearm and Elbow Pain, Burn Calories, Build Endurance & Maintain Muscle While Writing.

In this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Show.

You know, this is the best time in history to be an author, to be a creative, and all of this type of fitness stuff is so important for making it continuously fun. Because as you know, one of the worst things is loving your job, but being in pain, you know, this bashing on a keyboard and taking the impulses in our brain and then bashing them out on keys, this is not going to last that long. In big way of things. People have always communicated through voice. And look at the rise of podcasts. This is only going to shift.

He's an expert in human performance and nutrition, voted America's top personal trainer and one of the globe's most influential people in health and fitness. His show provides you with everything you need to optimize physical and mental performance. He is Ben Greenfield. Power, speed, mobility, balance, whatever it is for you, that's the natural movement. Get out there. When you look at all the studies done, studies that have shown the greatest efficacy, all the information you need in one place right here, right now on the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast. Hey, folks, it's Ben Greenfield. And if you've been listening to the podcast lately, you know that we've had a few episodes about staying healthy at work, staying fit at work, using things like standing desks and treadmill workstations. And this week I began to delve into the list of historical figures who have used things like standing workstations. And it really is kind of a veritable who's who. Everyone from Leonardo da Vinci to Thomas Jefferson to Charles Dickens to Winston Churchill to Abraham Lincoln, all of these folks used standing workstations. And then if you want to take things to the next level, it turns out that many of them didn't even write at these standing workstations. But many of these folks, especially famous authors, dictated and were able to walk and move and stand as they dictated. Folks like Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Hardy, John Milton, Alexander Dumas, Henry James, William Wordsworth, Charles Dickens, who I mentioned earlier, Bram Stoker. A lot of these folks actually used not just standing workstations, but also the power of dictation to stay healthier while they were being productive. And whether you are an author or a writer, or whether you're someone who's perhaps doing computer programming, consulting, running a company, whatever the case may be, or even perhaps just paying your bills at the desk, it turns out that there's quite a bit that you can do that goes above and beyond just standing at your desk when it comes to being more productive. Now, considering that I'm personally beginning to delve into the magic of dictation a little bit more, I figured we would get somebody on the show today who really knows this stuff a little bit more intimately when it comes to how to be productive as a writer and perhaps do it without just, say, typing. So my guest Today is author J.F. penn. Now, she is a New York Times and USA Today best selling author, primarily of thrillers, but she's written a lot of other books as well. And I'll give her a chance here in a moment to fill you in on some of her works. And she also has a fantastic blog over@thecreativepenn.com that's pen with two n's. I will link to that for you in the show notes. But she's a professional speaker on creative entrepreneurship, digital publish, Internet marketing. She was voted one of the Guardian UK's top 100 creative professionals. So she really knows her way around creating things. And I know that she's also delved into dictation a bit. Now as we chat and as we come up with good lists of everything from tools and software and gear and tips and books for you, I will take furious notes. And I'm going to put today's notes over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com FitRider that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com fitrider so that all being said, Joanna, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for having me, Ben. I'm super excited to be here.

And I have to ask you, I've noticed you have, I believe, is it a pen name and a real name? Is it JF or is it Joanna?

Yeah, you can call me Joanna, but I think of myself as kind of two writers. I write nonfiction as Joanna Penn and books for authors like how to make a living with your writing, stuff like that. And then as J.F. penn. I'm a kind of dark soul, more like Stephen King writing thrillers with a supernatural edge. So you're interviewing Joanna Penn here today. J.F. penn tends to stay in the shadows.

Okay. I've noticed a lot of authors seem to do that, like the Harry Potter author J.K. rowling. She's writing a new kind of like a dark, I believe it's like a mystery series or something like that, like a murder type of series. And it, I believe it's, it's dark, somewhat violent. I've heard little snippets here and there. But she's writing that under a completely different name, right?

Yeah. She writes as Robert Galbraith. And actually I'm a fan of Robert Galbraith, not the Harry Potter books. So yeah, it's interesting. And actually the crossover book for her, the Casual Vacancy, she wrote under J.K. rowling and got such bad reviews that because of her existing audience expected another Harry Potter. So she actually changed names and tried to keep it secret, but failed miserably about that. But yeah, Robert Galbraith is actually J.K. rowling.

That's very interesting. That's a conundrum I've thought about a little bit because I'm writing a fantasy fiction and I'm writing it as Ben Greenfield and I think I'm confusing a lot of people being the health and fitness writer who's out there writing about castles and dragons and princesses. Anyways, though, you're obviously a pretty prolific author yourself. And I just want to kind of let folks know before we jump into what a typical day of producing content looks like for you, what kind of books you actually write, because you've got a big range of books. And I'll link to your Amazon page, but can you fill us in a little bit?

Yeah, sure. So when I started writing, I was a miserable IT consultant. So my first book was called Career Change. And I thought I would end up sort of as a British Tony Robb self help author, but ended up. I know it's kind of funny, isn't it? But went down the route of writing, continue to write self help for authors, specifically around the digital marketing space. So how to market a book, for example, business for authors, how to be an author entrepreneur. So those type of books. And the book I'm. Right, the nonfiction book I'm writing at the moment is Mindset for Authors, which around the psychology of being an author, which is, you know, crazy. And you know, a lot about mindset. You know, the same with fitness. A lot of this stuff is about mindset. So that's one side of me that that nonfiction side and then fiction. I've got the Arcane series, which is Dan Brown meets Lara Croft, sort of, you know, kick ass, travel around the world fighting the bad guys type of thing. And then a darker series similar to Robert Galbraith, actually the London Psychic series. And I also have a fantasy book, you know, as you were talking about their risen gods. So I have 17 books now, most of which have been written over the last couple of years. And as we talk about dictation, you sort of talk about releasing your creativity. But certainly you tend to speed up as you sort of understand the process of how to write a book. It's a bit like fitness again, you know, if you keep those muscles going, it becomes much quicker to get into actually achieving something.

Yeah, sure. And Dan Brown meets Lara Croft is a perfect elevator pitch, by the way. That just kind of sums everything up in fewer than 30 seconds.

So just on that, you pointed out a list of historical people who dictate. Dan Brown actually uses dictation for his first draft, so I thought people might be interested in that.

Now, when it comes to dictation, for you personally, what influenced you to begin to look into dictating rather than, say, the traditional method of, you know, sitting in front of a roaring fire and typing a book?

Yeah, well, mainly it was pain. So I have had RSI in my elbow. Technically it is tennis elbow, even though it's from writing, not tennis.

What is rsi? For those listening.

Oh, sorry. Repetitive strain injury, which is something that a lot of those sedentary workers out there. If you work in an office or if you work on a computer in general, the longer you do this, the more likely you are to get RSI. Repetitive strain injury. So I. I'm 41 and I started working, you know, in an office environment in my 20s. So after 20 years of essentially using your arms in, let's face it, evolutionarily wise, not a very natural position, I started to get real pain. So I tried lots of things. We can come back to things like a Swiss ball and the standing desk, but in terms of the elbow, I tried everything. I got a desktop guy to come around and help me shift my positions. I tried all the different mouse techn techniques, different mice. I become ambi moustrious, use my left hand as well as my right. I tried so many things, and then I. I just went, you know what? I just have to master dictation. Because if you take away the hours every day of actually, you know, bashing the keyboard, this is going to be a much better idea. And, you know, in terms of longevity and wanting to be a fit author who does this, you know, for the rest of my life, if I can master this now, this is going to pay dividends, you know, until I die, basically. So the motivation for me was really to stop pain. And we all know how big a deal that is in. In motivation.

Yeah. And is this going to allow you as. As you move from typing and even foregoing? You know, I know there are a lot of ergonomic keyboards and ergonomic mice out there, but you're still, you know, as you alluded to, you're still moving all those little digital and flexor and extensor and pronator and supinator muscles in your hand just over and over again. Even if it is a good ergonomic setup, if you. If you take yourself away from having to be tied down to a keyboard, what are you looking for that to do for you from like a fitness standpoint in addition to just like reducing your risk of chronic repetitive motion injury?

Yeah. So take taking the fitness thing separately so you can do dictation at your desk. So, for example, right now I'm standing, I'm at a very desk that goes up and down and I'm standing up. So. And the mic I'm using now, which is a ATR 2100, I do dictate with this mic into Scrivener while standing here. Scrivener is writer software. It's absolutely brilliant. So I do quite a lot of. Just like this morning, for example, I did two hours of standing here talking at my computer. Now I'm doing all the micro movements of standing and I have a Swiss ball that I do bends on things. But in terms of the fitness side, what I'm also doing is going around my local. I'm only doing it around the park at the moment. I haven't gone for like really massive walks yet, but I take my iPhone and I've got a lav microphone which goes on my lapel, and I'm just walking around the park, kind of turning around and avoiding people as they walk towards me and talking into. I'm actually just using Voice Memos on the iPhone. And then when I get back.

Is Voice Memos an app on the iPhone?

Yeah, it comes native with the iPhone, but there are lots of dictation apps. And then when I get home, I drag those MP3 files into Dragon Dictate, which is the software I'm using, and that then transcribes that file. Now, it doesn't stop the editing process, but what it does is if you think about the first draft typing that we all do, whether it's blog posts, whether it's emails, whether it's. If you're writing books, long periods of, you know, bashing a keyboard, it takes away. If it takes away a couple of hours a day, then, you know, that's just amazing. So that's kind of my plan at the moment is the fitness side is slightly secondary to the getting rid of the pain. But there's another author, Kevin J. Anderson. I don't know if you've. You looked at him, he Every day he walks for four hours. He lives in Colorado or something. He hikes for four hours every day and dictates while he walks. And then he gives that to a transcriptionist and he edits in the afternoon. And he's written, like, hundreds of books that way. So you can definitely be a very fit author and still write a lot of books.

Oh, so many questions. So many questions based on what you just said. So let's start here. You mentioned, first of all that you're using a special kind of microphone. Like when you're at your computer and dictating. You said you use an Audio Technica microphone. Now, for people listening in who perhaps want to stand at their standing desk and dictate or pace around the room and dictate or. Or do dictation, do they need a special microphone like that versus using the native microphone that might come built into a computer?

Okay, so I've tried and failed at dictation twice before because of the microphone. And if you read all the message boards about Dragon, you can go down a real microphone hole in the Internet. All about microphones. So this is the third mic I've tried. It's the one I use for podcasting, and the quality's very good. Now, I also just said I use a standard LAV mic for the dictation files, and I think I might have overestimated the impact of the mic because those LAV files are not that bad. So I think what you have to consider is the quality of the microphone will impact how quickly the software will learn your voice. And I have found that the accuracy, I mean, I've really been doing this seriously now since New Year, and we're recording like second week January, But I've converted so fast to this because of the quality of the mic. So what I would say to people is, you know, you can give it a go with just whatever is standard. If you order Dragon, you can get mics with it, you can get Bluetooth, etc. But if you're struggling, then the first thing to look at is the quality of your mic, because obviously the audio quality, it doesn't understand your voice. It only understands sound waves. So the quality of the sound is super important.

Okay, got it. Now, the next thing that you mentioned in addition to the mic was this Dragon, for people not familiar with Dragon. What is that?

Yeah, so the software is Dragon Dictate, and it's on Mac and Windows. So it's just software that you install on your computer and then you train it so you open it up and you have to set up the specific microphone and scenario. So I have two profiles. One profile is my office with the ATR 2100. So there's not much external noise. The sound is regular because of the walls. And then I have a separate profile which is walking around the park with the lav mic because the quality of the files are different. So then what you have to do is train your dragon, which with the movie and everything, some people like to give their dragon a name.

Train your dragon?

Yeah, you have to train your dragon. Yeah, so, and what that means is obviously people listening to my voice versus your voice. The software will be able to do both of our voices, but it needs to get to know us and how we speak. And you know, I'm English, so you set the, you know, I would set English, UK English, you would set American English. And then, and that will be things like I say full stop, you say period at the end of a sentence. That will impact some of those types of things. And also it will pick up your accent in different ways. So the things that then you read, you have to actually read a number of passages into the software. And again, you can put up all of these barriers. And one of my barriers to doing this before was, oh, I don't want to spend all that time training my dragon. Seriously, it took about two hours, two days in a row. It was, I mean, it was crazy. I know. And I mean, if you think about it, we've got.

Did that training process. Sorry to interrupt, but did that training process simply involve you reading scripts into your Dragon software or saying specific words that you use frequently? How does that training process actually work?

Yeah, so they have a number of exercises that you read that presumably include all the different tones that you might use normally. But also you actually read the Dragon tutorial. So you read to them how Dragon works. So you're actually learning how to use Dragon while you're reading to them. So it's actually very smart that way. And one little tip is I wrote down a whole load of the commands that I knew I would use regularly. So, for example, spell that or open quote. Because when I'm dictating fiction, I have to say open quote and then some, you know, whatever, then close quote, etc. Non fiction authors, bloggers won't have to say so much like, um, so that's really important. But you just read these exercises. Then what I did was I actually opened up one of my own novels and started to read my own novels to the software on the second day. And and if you don't have your own novels, you can just like, you know, read whatever you like. Pick a book off your shelf just so you can get a nice chunk of, of audio. And then what you do is you, you go through and correct it. So you just go, you know, choose. If we're looking at a line of text, I would say choose Greenfield, because maybe it, sorry, correct Greenfield. And then spell that if it had spelled it wrong. Yeah. And once you do that and you think, oh my goodness, that'll take forever. But you know, I'm writing the novel I'm writing at the moment. Destroyer of Worlds is set in India and it's about a statue of Shiva Nataraja. Now, most people listening won't be able to spell Shiva Nataraja, but it's once. I'd helped it once. Every time I said that from then on, it spelled it right. So I think my biggest tip would be just give it a couple of days, do those exercises, read something that contains the words that you would normally read. And I'm like a super convert. It's amazing. It's made such a difference to me. And we can talk about productivity, but just health wise, it's amazing.

Yeah, it's really interesting. And this Dragon Dictate software, I mean, it sounds like training. You put in the initial amount of work necessary when it comes to say, let's say, preparing for a triathlon. And once you've got that work kind of put in the bank, you can begin to go on cruise control and just maintain fitness. It sounds similar with Dragon Dictation, where once you train this software to be able to dictate your words effectively, things get a lot easier from there.

Yes. And they get easier and easier and easier because they learn your patterns. What you can also do is actually drag whole chunks of, say, blog posts. If you, if you do podcasts, for example, you could drag in a podcast and go through that and train with that so it will pick up more of your vocabulary. Some people just try and do that upfront or you can do it over time. And as I said, I found even just in two weeks, the quality is getting better and better.

Amazing. Okay, cool. So another thing that you mentioned was that you use a varidesk. Now for you, is that something that you're kind of adjusting from a seated to a standing position throughout the day? Do you primarily use it in its standing position and kind of as, as a follow up question to that? Are you just standing on like carpet or wood or do you use one of These like fancy bouncy mats or topographical mats or something like that.

Yeah. So I have an. Just an IKEA varied desk that goes up and down when I'm dictating or when I'm doing a podcast like this, I'm standing. And the added benefit of doing that is it's up so high. Like, the desk is kind of near my chest, so I can't actually use my hands. So it's a really good chance to, you know, unless I put them up near my shoulders, you know, in a really unnatural position. So what that. What it does is help me when I'm dictation to not use my arm. And at that point I can be, you know, I could be squeezing a ball or I could be just relaxing it or whatever. So the varied desk kind of also forces the issue of relaxing the painful arm, which is really good. And then when I finish dictation, I will often do a just a first pass through the scene I've just written and just pick up anything, you know, that needed picking up. And for that I put the desk back down to sitting. And I have. I use a Swiss ball as a chair. I have done for a couple of years due to back pain. There's another one. And the Swiss ball got rid of my back pain completely. So that's magic too. But I sand. I have a carpet in this room. So I do think that if you have a hard floor, you should get just a bit of carpet from a carpet warehouse or something. I don't know if you need one of those, like, special mats. You can just get like an off cut of carpet just so you're not standing on hard floor.

Yeah, I personally have a desk. It's one of these hand crank desks that goes up and down called a rebel desk. That's in my office that I'm speaking to you at right now. And I'm standing on, like a foam mat. It's like this bouncy kind of foam mat that makes you shift your weight back and forth as you're standing. And then up on my kitchen table, I have one of these varidesks. It's like a very small one built for a laptop, but that also goes up and down. And I recently interviewed someone you might be interested in this. They make a stool called a mogo stool that you lean. It's made by a company called Focal Upright. You lean back on it and it kind of opens up your hip flexors. Apparently that's one of the issues with the stability ball. And this is another Interview I recently did with a guy who wrote a book called all the good things that are bad for you. And he writes about a stability ball. In that book, he says all these people sitting on stability balls, they help with kind of keeping your core activated and stuff during the day. But what happens is they actually can compress over time, your lower spine, your lumbar spine. And so I've started to use one of these little stools that you lean back on instead of a ball to sit on.

Oh, okay. I'll check that out. Yeah, I mean, this is the thing. I think we're constantly kind of trying to hack the way we do stuff, and I've been changing little things over time to try and just get that little extra, you know, less pain and more productivity. That's kind of what we all want, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly. Now back to your story about how you dictate. You talked about how when at the park, you will speak into a. I believe you said a lav mic. Now, is that just like the microphone that comes with your iPhone that you're speaking into?

I bought a rode R O D E lav. Not really. Not massively technical, and I couldn't find the packet. But I think the phrase lav mic is just the ones that you attach to your collar. You know, have like a cable that go to your phone. So it's just slightly better than the iPhone one, but I think you could just try with the iPhone normal thing and see what happens. I just decided to go with this slightly one better and then, yeah, just talking into that. The other thing if you're doing that is make sure you stop and save the file regularly because you don't look down, and 20 minutes later, you've just lost all that. So I tend to save each file at about five minutes, and you can sync it or email it to yourself, or just when you get back, plug the phone into your computer and drag the files over.

Okay, gotcha. Now, when you are bringing those audio files that you have recorded while on the go, because I know a lot of our listeners will. Those who are running or who want to build endurance while walking, they'll really like this concept of using a lav mic plus the iPhone's native voice dictation software and then bringing that back and somehow feeding it into the computer. But when you feed it into the computer, let's say when you download this MP3 file and you put it onto your computer, are you then playing that out loud while the Dragon dictation software is open? Kind of sucking that in. Is that how that works?

No. Dragon has a feature of transcription, so it's like a transcription mode. So you drag the file. It's like magic. It's really weird. You drag the file into this little box and then over on the other side of the page it starts typing. It's like your words appear on the screen. So you can literally drag the file in and then leave it to just run if you want, and it will just appear on the screen. I should say there's a couple of other options. There is a Dragon Dictate app for the iPhone and probably for all the other phones that you can use to use voice to text directly into the app as opposed to recording an MP3 and then getting it transcribed later, either with Dragon or paying for transcription, which is another option. The other thing that you have in America, which I don't have in the UK yet because it's not released, is Dragon Anywhere. And that is a like software as a service based Dragon. And I actually think that that may be amazing, as in it may become even more amazing because if you think that the software as a service option, they're going to be somehow collecting, I guess, those voices and they will get a lot more varied data and a lot more var voices by doing software as a service than doing downloadable software to your computer. Because they can't sample my voice because it's not connected in any way to them. So I think people should check out Dragon Anywhere and I think that will sync directly in the cloud. But as I say, it's not available here. So check that out.

I see that I'll link to this, by the way, in the show notes. I'm taking furious notes for folks because I know we're going over a lot of little different tools and pieces of software. I see that they do have this Dragon Anywhere and yes, it appears that it will sync to the cloud. So I'll look into that and link to that for folks as well. Now, there was another piece of software that you briefly mentioned, Joanna, that I want to make sure that I clear up for folks, and that was this Scrivener. And the reason I wanted to mention that is because I actually I began using Scrivener. Scrivener, Scrivener, as Elmer Fudd would say. I began using that when I started writing fiction because I wanted to look into something that was different than Word or Evernote, which I've used to write all my books in the past. And it's quite an interesting piece of software. That I'm sure I underutilized because I just recently started using it. But can you explain what exactly that is and why someone may want to look into using something like that?

Yeah, sure. Scrivener is basically for writing. It's like word on steroids. And the main reason you want to use it is because of its drag and drop functionality. If you're writing in a word document and you want to move a chapter, so writing a non fiction book, for example, pretty much nobody writes in order for a nonfiction book. And even with fiction I don't write in order. I'll often write a scene that I'll want to move around later on. Scrivener allows you to just write each thing as a separate document and then drag and drop them around and then compile them into the finished document. So for writing, it's amazing. It has a kind of planning overview screen. It's got a writing screen. The statistics on it are so brilliant. There's like a power bar which shows you how many words a day you need to write in order to make your deadlines, which is really super motivating. But it also has it outputs the files you need to publish. So if you are an indie author or self publishing, as I I am, I go direct to Amazon, ibooks, all the publishers, I just export the files directly from Scrivener and use those to publish. So it saves super amount of money on publishing as well as time and productivity with writing. So it's absolutely probably the one tool I couldn't run my business without.

Yeah, yeah, I've found it to be quite helpful. Again, I'm only about halfway through the user manual, but for any of you out there who write any type of books or I believe like papers, projects, things like that, it works very, very well for that one's called Scrivener. So John, I've got some other questions for you in terms of the way that you dictate. One is that I have heard complaints from people who write, people who go into right brain creative mode. At specific times during the day they will claim, and I found this to even be the case for me sometimes that they need to sit, they need to rest, they need to have nothing else going on except just like them in their special sit spot while they write or while they produce that creative work that they're producing. Have you found that you've been able to overcome that? Was that never an issue with you sitting to be productive or how have you overcome that and combine that with this use of Dictation.

Well, I think that it depends what your goals are as a writer or a creative and how you look at it. So I'm going with the kind of Stephen King and the Lee Child approach, which is this is, you know, it's a brilliant job, but it's a job like any other. So you don't say, oh, I need to be in this special place to do this specific thing, or you know, you don't say, I have to be in this gym on that piece of equipment in order to get fit. That's, you know, not how, how it should work. You should be able to do this stuff anywhere. And if you are a full time creative making a living from your writing as I do, I don't think you can afford to get too precious about where you create. So for me, although I used to, you know, if you interviewed me last year, I used to go to cafes and write and I would listen to rain and thunderstorms. So I would plug in my rain and thunderstorms and I would go to a cafe and I would write. And that was my thing. A year before that I would go to a, you know, a library and write there. And now I can't listen to rain and thunderstorms while I'm speaking. At least I haven't tried it yet. But, you know, so I've changed my process. And what I found really interestingly with the dictation is it's better than I expected it to be. Like even that walking around the park, I was just, just, it was awful. I was just thinking, oh my goodness, this is a pile of garbage. And then when I got it back, what's so interesting with the dictation is the voice is much freer. So what I am discovering, and I think we all discover, is that you can be creative in different ways anywhere. So yeah, there we go.

Has it changed your writing voice much in terms of the way that you write when typing versus the way that you write when dictating? It seems as though so people just, they express themselves differently via voice than via writing. Like, have you noticed that your books have changed?

Well, I'll tell you what has changed, and that's the dialogue in fiction. Because when you write dialogue with your hands, you can come up with convoluted sentences and read it later and go, what the hell? You know, you can't physically say that out loud in a good way. But with dialogue in fiction, it makes a real difference to actually speak it because it always comes out, out right. Or at least when you Speak it. You're like that. Yeah, that didn't sound good. So you stop doing it. And I would say that dictation is diff. Dictating a book or a blog post or whatever is different to what we're doing. So we're using words like, you know, and yeah. And nah and you know, filler words. But when you're dictating, you kind of have to think, think about it a bit before you speak. But then the words appear on the screen or they get recorded. And what I'm finding is I might say, you know, the room smelled of tobacco, the room smelled of roses, the room smelled of sweat. Now those three things affect the tone of the book in very different ways. Right? You know, a smell. Now I can, I don't have to make that decision right now. So I can just say those three things. Now when, remember we're just dictating first draft. I think it's very difficult to edit with dictation. Obviously some people do it, but I'm just doing first draft. So then when I go and edit that draft later on in the day, I can change whichever one I want to now. So I'm finding I'm actually putting more into it. I don't feel like I'm wasting time. You know, when you're writing something, you're like, oh, you know, I'm not going to write three different things. I'm going to choose the one that I want right now, which is a kind of self editing thing. So I actually think it's going to free my voice a lot more. And yeah, I'm really enjoying it.

Really interesting. Now, when you're writing and you're walking through the park, or when you're dictating and you're walking through the park, or when you're dictating at your desk, I'm curious if you're using any of these focus apps or even like audio and noise based apps that I know a lot of people are kind of tapping into right now. Like I recently have discovered, for example, example one website called Brain FM that plays special focus noises that you listen to as you work. Or there are also special apps that will pop up and tell you to every 55 minutes take a five minute break, like Pomodoro technique apps. Now, in your quest to become a more geeky author and use things like dictation and other other advanced forms of writing, have you began to tap into any of these other type of apps or pieces of software that maybe go above and beyond dictation?

Well, Scrivener, as I mentioned, has this kind of status bar, and that is really key for me. So I do words per day. So my goal, actually, and this is interesting, my goal used to be 2,000 words a day with dictation. It's now 3,000 because I'm starting to speed up, and it will probably get more than that. So that's really interesting. But. So my goals are around words per day. If I'm going to finish a manuscript by the end of January, I have to do a certain number of words per day. So, you know, that's. That's the life of a. Of a working creator. So I don't. The pomodoro thing, I'm. I just take breaks pretty much at every thousand words. And that might take 45 minutes, it might take an hour. But I'm pretty much into the scene. Like, I'm writing. If I'm writing a scene like I was writing one earlier about a shootout in a church in Goa in India, you know, I'm pretty into it. So I don't want to. I don't even need a break until I've. I reach somewhere in the scene and I need, you know, they escape or they get caught or whatever. But I do, like I said, I used to listen to Rain and Thunderstorms when I wrote, and now I do just have one album that I put on repeat on itunes, which is Rain and Thunderstorms. But I also use noisly.com n o I s l I dot com. And you can. You can. Yeah, similar. It's probably same as that brain thing. You just select, like I select rain and waves and thunder, you know, and then you can adjust the intensity of the sound on each of the levels. And then. But it's, you know, nature. Nature noises, white noise, really, to just block out the world.

Right, Exactly. Obviously, what you can't listen to while you're dictating, but then when you go in and you edit those drafts, that's when you're putting something like that on.

Yeah. And I mean, I actually. I'm going to experiment with listening while dictating. At the moment, I'm still a little obsessed with hearing my own voice as I do it, because I'm still getting to the point where I'm learning which words I need to enunciate anymore or how fast I can speak. It's actually really good. You can speak pretty fast, and you can tell I'm quite a fast speaker. And it will catch up with you. But I think as soon as I have started to close my eyes. So I think if I could get to a point where I close my eyes, plug myself into some rain and just talk, which is pretty cool. I mean, I'm hoping I'll get to that point. I know you were going to ask me about one of my bigger fitness goals, and I booked myself on this ultramarathon race to the Stones in July, so I have to go and do 8 hour, 10 hour walks to train for that. So I'm really hoping that I can get to that point of a sort of Zen state where I just Suddenly. I've dictated 10,000 words.

Yeah, I mean, it's such a cool hack to be able to build up all the tiny foot and core and hip muscles that you'll need for endurance, the bone density in your feet, et cetera, and still be able to produce. It's something even for me, as a guy who has been a vocal proponent of things like standing desks and treadmill workstations, et cetera, it's really been a two year process for me personally to get to the point where I can really, truly be productive while walking 4 to 6 miles a day on my treadmill or spending lots of time standing. It definitely takes again, just like anything, not to kick this horse to death, but just like anything, it takes a little bit of work put in on the front end. But I've noticed that it really has begun to pay dividends. And the cool thing is, and I've mentioned this before on a previous podcast, for folks who are maybe going after a very hardcore torque intense goal, like say a sprint triathlon or an obstacle race or something that requires a lot of high intensity work. The cool thing is, if you engage in low level physical activity during the day, or standing or walking or I like to think of it as tricking my body into thinking it's one of these ancestral hunter gatherers, even though really I'm just working on the computer. But what happens is that once you've done all that, at the end of the day you can just do a very quick, intense effort, like a 20 minute CrossFit miniature workout or a high intensity set on the bike that might last 10 to 15 minutes. And that's just kind of the icing on the cake because you've built all the endurance, you've burnt all the calories, you've done all the other stuff that a long workout might do already just during your day of work. And I think that it's a really cool 1, 2 combo, even for athletes right Just for people who want to, say, stay active during the day. So I find this stuff fascinating and so useful. It's really, you know, not to overuse the word hack, but it's a life hack, really.

Yeah. And I. What's also interesting is I think we're at this weird point in history that is not going to be very long. You know, the typewriter, the QWERTY keyboard, was invented to slow typists down. So there are some people who are using, you know, a different type of keyboard that enables you to type things faster. But I think we're also getting to the point where, you know, if you think forward five, five years, maybe 10 years, to a more virtual reality world, you know, the Minority Report thing with all the stuff around you, I think, you know, this. This bashing on a keyboard and taking the impulses in. In our brain and then bashing them out on keys, this is not going to last that long in. In the big way of things, people have always communicated through voice and. And look at the rise of podcasts. This is only going to shift, I believe, into something that more and more people are doing in terms of doing their work with their full bodies as opposed to being kind of hunched up around a desk. So I think we're kind of living in this weird space before technology frees us from the computer.

I'm looking out my window right now into the forest, because I live out in the forest, and I have this giant picture window that looks out from my standing desk out into the trees. And I could just imagine removing this glass window and installing some kind of a special upgraded pane that allows me to do what Tom Cruise does in that movie. What was the movie again?

Minority Report.

Minority Report, where I'm just using my hands to manipulate the entire screen and work that way during the day. I could totally see that happening. Just basically a adding even more technology into the mix. Now, when it comes to dictation, this is obviously a little bit of a process, right? Like getting the software, getting the tools, training the computer, doing all this. Are there any books or resources that you like or that you've learned? Not that we haven't just laid everything else out for people in this podcast quite thoroughly, but would you add anything into the mix when it comes to other resources? Resources for folks?

Yeah, sure. So there's a great book called Dictate your book by Monica Leonel. L E O N E L L e. And I also interviewed Monica on my podcast, the Creative Pen Podcast. I think it was back in October, and I pick her brains. And it's funny if anyone does listen to that. And then, you know, after listening to this, what you will hear is the resistance in my voice.

Meaning. Meaning you did not want to dictate. You had the same. A raised eyebrow that I probably do.

Yeah. The excuses that I was putting out there are the ones that most people will be feeling right now. And, and in your interviewing me, and I'm a convert, so it's. It's so interesting. Once you force yourself through the things that you think will be a problem, and then, you know, kind of the whole world opens up. It's a bit like, you know, scrivener for writers as well. When you go from word to scrivener, it's like, oh, my goodness, how did I do anything before? It's kind of amazing, you know, and like, how we believe that we couldn't. How did we live before the Internet or Skype? I mean, these are the crazy things. It's. It's kind of that next iteration, really. But yes, that the book is Dictate youe Book by Monica Leonel.

Okay, got it. Dictate your book, how to Write youe Book Faster, Better and Smarter Growth. Hacking for Storytellers. There we go. So she's picked up that. The hacking word as well. Well, I like it. Well, I'm going to put a list of resources for everything that we've talked about, from the Dragon dictation to the lav mic and the microphone that you use. I'll look into this Kevin J. Anderson fellow that you mentioned as well and put a link to his page and your page and everything else that we discussed today. Joanna, because you've been a wealth of knowledge, is there anything else that you want to add in for folks when it comes to dictation or staying fit while still being a writer or a producer?

Only that this is the best time in history to be an author, to be a creative. And all of this type of fitness stuff is so important for making it continuously fun because one of the worst things is loving your job, but being in pain. And I hope everyone will create more in 2016, but also stay super fit. And I'm on Twitter at the Creative Pen with a double N if anyone has any questions about what we've talked about.

Well, fantastic. And I will also keep folks updated because. And I haven't really talked about this much before, aside from this podcast, but this really is pretty big on my radar for 2016, as I would really like personally to become a dictating author rather than a typing author. For for many of the reasons that Joanna talked about, including the fact that as an obstacle course racer, I'm doing an ungodly number of pull ups and hangs and wrist work and hand work and forearm work. And it sure would be nice if those muscles could rest while I write at the end of the day. So this is really, really good information. And I'm gonna put a link to the show notes for all of you listening in to ask your questions, leave your comments and access the resources for today's show. Show. All of that will be over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com FitWriter BenGreenfieldFitness.com fitrider and if you have some follow up questions, just leave them there and I will be sure to jump in and reply. So, Joanna, thank you so much for coming on today's show.

Thanks so much for having me, Ben. That was really fun.

All right, folks. Well, this is Ben Greenfield and Joanna Penn signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a healthy week. You've been listening to the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness and performance advice.

Sam.