Free tool
Typing tax calculator: how many hours a year you spend typing
Enter how many words you write a day and how fast you type. The calculator shows the hours a year that takes, what that time costs, and how much of it speaking could give back.
Hours typing a year
221
Cost of that time
$11,058
Hours if you spoke it
77
Hours back a year
144
At 52 wpm, 3,000 words a day is 57.7 minutes of typing. Spoken at 150 wpm it is 20. That gap is about 144 hours a year, worth $7,224 at your rate.
This counts raw typing time only. Fixing what you dictated takes time too, so treat it as the upper bound.
How it works
- Start with words a day. A busy inbox plus Slack is often 2,000 to 5,000.
- Use your real typing speed. Take the typing speed test if you do not know it.
- Speaking speed defaults to 150 wpm, close to the 153 measured in a Stanford study. Change it to your own from the speaking vs typing test.
Questions people ask
How many hours a year do I spend typing?
Words a day divided by your typing speed gives minutes a day. At 3,000 words and 52 wpm that is about 58 minutes, or roughly 220 hours across 230 working days.
Is the saving real?
It is an upper bound. You still read and fix what you dictate. A tool that cleans up as it types keeps that fixing short.
Sources
Talk instead of typing, on any Mac app
Hold fn and talk: clean text at your cursor. Hold ⌥ ⌘ and ask: Lazur sees your screen and answers. Free for 3 days, no card.