Voice to Text for Executive Dysfunction

You know what you need to write. You might even know exactly what you want to say. But the gap between knowing and doing feels like a wall. Typing requires organizing, structuring, beginning — and beginning is the impossible part. Voice typing lowers the barrier to almost nothing. Hold a button. Start talking. You don't need to have it organized. You don't need the perfect first sentence. You just need to speak, and words appear. The wall becomes a step.

First 1,000 words free No organizing required macOS app

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The Typing Problem

You know what to write but can't start writing it

The email has been open for an hour. The document sits blank. You've mentally composed the response five times. But your fingers won't move to the keyboard. It's not that you don't know what to say — it's that the act of starting feels like pushing a boulder uphill. The gap between intention and action is where executive dysfunction lives.

The thought of organizing your thoughts is exhausting

Before you can type, you feel like you need to know what you're going to type. What comes first? How should you structure it? Is this the right opening? The mental prep work required to begin writing feels like a whole separate task — one that depletes your already limited executive resources before you've written a single word.

Every writing task feels equally overwhelming

A two-sentence Slack reply and a ten-page report feel the same in terms of difficulty to start. Your brain doesn't scale the resistance to match the task size. Everything requires the same impossible activation energy to begin, whether it's a quick thank-you note or a major project proposal.

You keep waiting for the right moment to start

Maybe if you had more energy. Maybe after lunch. Maybe once you've cleared your inbox. The right moment keeps not arriving because the right moment doesn't exist. You're not waiting for optimal conditions — you're stuck in a starting loop that never resolves, because starting itself is the problem.

Half-started drafts accumulate everywhere

Your folders are full of documents with one sentence. Your notes app has fragments of thoughts that never became whole. You started, technically, but the momentum didn't carry you forward. Each abandoned beginning is a reminder of how many times you've tried to push past the wall and couldn't.

How It Works

Blurt removes the startup friction from writing. No organizing, no perfect beginning, no typing mechanics. Just speak and capture.

Hold your hotkey

Press and hold your chosen key. That's it. That's the only decision you need to make. Not what to say first, not how to structure it — just press the button.

Say whatever comes out

Start talking. It doesn't need to be polished. It doesn't need to be in order. Just speak the thoughts you've been holding in your head. Blurt captures them exactly as you say them.

Release and you've started

Let go of the key. Words are now on screen. You didn't have to organize first. You didn't have to find the perfect opening. You just spoke, and now something exists where nothing existed before.

Real Scenarios

Getting past the blank page

The document has been blank for thirty minutes. With typing, you'd need to decide what to type first. With Blurt, you just start talking: 'Okay, so the main thing I need to communicate here is that the timeline isn't working and we need to push it back, and the reason is...' Messy? Yes. But now there are words on the page. You've started. The blank page is gone.

Responding to emails you've been avoiding

The email has sat in your inbox for three days. You've opened it twelve times. With Blurt, you hold the button and just respond: 'Thanks for sending this over. I've looked through the proposal and I think we should move forward with option B because it gives us more flexibility on timing.' Sent. Three days of avoidance resolved in fifteen seconds of speaking.

Brain dumps when you can't organize

You have a project due but you can't figure out where to start. Instead of trying to outline, you just talk: 'So the parts I need to cover are the background section, then the methodology, then results, and the conclusion should probably tie back to the initial question we posed...' You've externalized your mental model. Now you can see it and work with it.

Quick captures before the moment passes

You briefly have the motivation to respond to something. That window might close in thirty seconds. With typing, you'd lose the moment to activation friction. With voice, you capture it immediately: hold, speak, release, done. The window was open long enough because speaking required almost no activation energy.

First drafts without perfectionism paralysis

Typing feels permanent. Each keystroke is a commitment. Speaking is just talking — impermanent, casual, low-stakes. When you speak your first draft, you bypass the perfectionism that often blocks executive dysfunction. It doesn't have to be right. It just has to exist. You can fix it later.

Meeting notes without the overhead

Taking notes requires typing, which requires starting, which requires deciding what's worth noting. The overhead means notes often don't get taken at all. With voice, you can capture key points with almost no friction: hold button, say 'Action item: follow up with Sarah on budget by Friday,' release. The thought is captured without the startup cost.

macOS has built-in dictation, but Blurt is designed specifically for people who struggle with starting. Here's how they differ.

	Blurt	macOS Dictation
Activation friction	Single hotkey, instant response — minimal barrier to start	Menu navigation or double-tap Control
Startup delay	Zero lag — speaking starts immediately	Brief connection delay before listening
Mental overhead	Just hold and talk — no UI to navigate	Modal interface requires attention
Punctuation	Automatic — one less thing to think about	Must speak punctuation marks
Accuracy	AI-powered, handles natural speech patterns well	Good but can struggle with casual speech
Works everywhere	System-wide, any text field	System-wide but inconsistent in some apps
Price	$10/month or $99/year (first 1,000 words free)	Free with macOS

Frequently Asked Questions

I struggle to start speaking too. How is this different from typing?

Speaking has inherently lower activation energy than typing. When you type, you're making hundreds of micro-decisions: what word comes first, how to spell it, where to put punctuation. When you speak, you're doing something your brain has done since childhood — just talking. It's not zero friction, but it's dramatically less friction. Many people with executive dysfunction find that speaking bypasses the paralysis that typing triggers.

What if what I say is disorganized or messy?

Good. That's the point. You don't need to have it organized before you speak. Speak the messy version first. Get something on the page. You can organize it after it exists. The goal isn't perfect first drafts — it's breaking through the starting barrier. A messy paragraph you can edit is infinitely more useful than a perfect paragraph you never wrote.

I often don't know what I want to say until I'm saying it. Will this work?

Yes. That's actually a feature of speaking, not a bug. Talking is thinking out loud. Many people discover what they want to say in the process of saying it. You can pause, backtrack, restart mid-sentence. Blurt captures what you say, and you can shape it afterward. The messy process of figuring out what you mean is exactly what voice typing is good for.

What if I can only manage a sentence or two at a time?

That's fine. Hold the button, say one sentence, release. Take a break. Hold the button again, say another sentence. Blurt works at whatever pace you can manage. Small bursts of progress are still progress. Over time, those sentences accumulate into paragraphs, and paragraphs into finished work.

Does this work for really long writing tasks?

Yes, but not all at once. For longer work, use Blurt to break the starting barrier on each section. Get a messy first pass down by speaking, then edit. Repeat for the next section. The goal is to lower the activation energy at every starting point, not to produce a perfect document in a single recording session.

What's the free tier and can I use it indefinitely?

The free tier gives you first 1,000 words free, permanently. That's enough to capture several emails, meeting notes, or document sections each week. It's designed to let you genuinely integrate voice typing into your workflow and see if it helps with starting. The limit resets weekly, so you can use it as long as you want.

Does Blurt work with Windows or just Mac?

Blurt is macOS only. We focused on creating the best possible Mac experience with native menu bar integration and system-level keyboard shortcuts. Windows and Linux versions are not currently available.

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