Your Voice Might Be Your Secret Creativity Weapon
A Creative Hack by: Kyle Rosendo
Have you ever had a brilliant idea while driving, but have forgotten what it was by the time you arrived? Or have you found yourself explaining a problem to a friend, and halfway through your explanation, the solution has become clear?
Your voice might be one of your most underused creative, yet completely practical tools.
It turns out that talking out loud changes how your brain works, and for anyone who has a job that involves thinking - writers, designers, entrepreneurs, teachers, content creators - this can be a game-changer.
Why Smart People Have Always Talked to Themselves
Voltaire used to read his drafts out loud over and over. Charles Darwin did the same thing. They weren't being eccentric - they knew that there was an inherent benefit to doing things this way.
When you speak your thoughts out loud instead of just thinking them silently, your brain engages in a completely different way. You're not just thinking anymore - you're also hearing, processing language, and even activating the emotional centers of your brain. Your brain is engaging far more with the content you are working with.
The Science, Without The Headache
Researchers have discovered some fascinating things about what happens when we verbalize our thoughts:
Your brain gets help - When you speak out loud, you activate something psychologists call the "phonological loop" - basically, your brain's audio assistant. This frees up mental space for actual thinking and not just trying to remember everything.
Your ideas get sharper - Talking forces you to organize messy thoughts into actual sentences. Gaps in your logic become obvious and solutions appear. It's why explaining a problem out loud very often leads you to the answer.
You remember more - You remember information better when you say it out loud - researchers call this the "production effect." Recording an idea vocally might actually make you remember it later.
But Wait - Doesn't Writing Work Better?
Well, things are about to get even more interesting. Scientists gave people a creativity test where they listed unusual uses for everyday objects. Some of the people wrote their ideas whereas others spoke them into the researchers recorder one at a time.
The results? Writing won for quantity. People who wrote generated more ideas overall as they could see what they'd already said, where speaking requires holding each idea in your head while avoiding repeats, which can become quite challenging.
The twist is that the creativity of the ideas was identical. Speaking produced the same quality of original thinking as writing, just fewer total ideas, which means if you have control over the recordings (or better, their transcriptions), you are not at any disadvantage whatsoever.
When Speaking Out Loud Really Shines
Emotional clarity - Writer and psychology enthusiast Ima Pfirsh tried keeping a voice diary and found that speaking her thoughts brought her more relief than standard journaling. After recording her unfiltered feelings, she described it as having "felt lighter, more peaceful - with a clear mind." So, when anxiety blocks creativity, speaking can help to release that pressure.
Capturing fleeting ideas - Have you walked through a door and forgotten why you were in the next room? Cognitive psychologist Robert Epstein advises keeping a voice recorder to catch thoughts before they vanish. That shower thought? Record it immediately, otherwise by tonight, or sooner, it'll be gone.
Solving tricky problems - One study found that explaining a problem out loud "to someone else", even if you're alone, dramatically increased solution rates. Engineers sometimes call this the "rubber duck" technique, where they explain their solution to a complex program to a rubber duck, and suddenly spot issues in their logic.
The Stream-of-Consciousness Advantage
Unlike typing (in particular), which invites constant self-editing, speaking encourages raw, unfiltered thought. Anne-Laure Le Cunff, founder of Ness Labs and respected neuroscientist, explains that "the spontaneity of speech often produces creative connections that slower and more careful typing might miss."
It’s sort of like improvisation, like where Jazz musicians riff freely before composing. You can riff with your own voice to discover surprising ideas you can refine later.
Building Your Idea Archive
Similar to what we explored earlier, something interesting that happens when you record voice notes regularly is that you are effectively creating an idea library you can refer back to later.
After recording numerous entries in her verbal diary, Pfirsh discovered patterns. The topics she spoke passionately about revealed what truly interested her and her longer recordings could often be "transformed into a blog post."
For any and all creatives, recordings become a sort of raw creative footage - rough material you can use for future projects, and because you've already articulated an idea at length you know you have plenty to say about it!
Overcoming the Blank Page
A major creativity killer is perfectionism - that internal critic that stops you before you start.
Voice recording can help to bypass the brick wall. One writer noted: "I was simply allowing the words to come … without bothering to censor them and this gave me a sense of flow."
The voice recording is private and temporary - you can always record over it, or even delete it - eliminating fear of judgment and can also enable a kind of risk-taking with your ideas.
So, How do we Actually Use This
The research suggests combining approaches to activate the strengths of each method:
● Talk through problems to understand them, then transcribe and edit to develop solutions.
● Dictate a stream-of-consciousness draft, then edit in writing.
● Record voice memos when inspiration strikes (driving, walking, etc.).
● Read your work aloud to catch issues and refine ideas.
The Bottom Line
We sometimes forget that our voice was our first thinking tool. Before you could write, you could speak and that connection between voice and thought is powerful.
As Le Cunff said, "our voices were our first and most natural thinking tools." Speaking engages your whole brain and captures thought in raw, unfiltered form. Used intentionally, through daily audio journals, spontaneous voice memos, or talking through tough problems, your voice can sharpen how you work and how you think.
So the key is simple: say it out loud.
Here's the best part: with today's transcription technology, you don't have to choose between speaking and writing. Record your thoughts by voice, then use an app to automatically convert them to text. You get the creative benefits of speaking with the organizational benefits of having everything written down.
Your next breakthrough might be one voice memo away.
BIO: Kyle Rosendo
Kyle spent his career creating financial technology systems, formerly as a CTO and COO, however he now focuses his time learning new ways to create new and useful software for the world whilst pushing the boundaries of technology to do so. He has created Transcribbit, a WhatsApp bot that provides highly accurate transcription for voice notes without needing a separate application.
Website: Transcribbit.io
