Voice recording has always been my ideal method to capture ideas. It’s basically like skipping the hassle of formatting and organising the text.

However, as I became more and more engaged with recording ideas, I faced a problem I didn’t expect. My voice notes felt like they had been lost in the abundance of recordings. It became extremely hard to locate specific notes I had recorded.

That’s when I decided to take a turn that changed everything. I began to convert my voice notes from Clideo.  And suddenly everything became much easier, searchable, editable, and organised.

So, to all the people who are struggling with the same thing, I would love to share my journey, what I faced, what went wrong, and how I changed everything. Let’s begin.

The Problem I Faced Before Turning Recordings into Searchable Text

Before I started converting my recordings into searchable text, I ran into several unexpected challenges. Some of these include:

1. I Had to Listen to Entire Recordings Again

Though at first recording my idea felt much easier and time saving, it was actually more time consuming.

Once I had a long list of my voice notes, I had to listen to the entire notes to figure out the one I was searching for. That thing really tested my patience and made me extremely frustrated.

Furthermore, without timestamps or searchable content, I didn’t know where to find what I was looking for. Hence, the time that it took me researching was way more than what it took me to record.

2. Important Ideas Kept Getting Buried

Because voice recording is a much easier method to take notes, I did almost everything. From content outline to notes from client meetings and feedback, I used to make notes of every detail.

That is what became my nightmare. I had an abundance of notes without realising it. Hence, the important notes started to be buried beneath unrelated information.

There was a time when I was in need of something important that I had recorded, but when I tried to search for it, I felt lost in a deep ocean.

3. Organising Recording Turned Into a Mess

I thought I could organise my voice notes, but it was one of my biggest daydreams. I started off putting them into a folder, numbering them as “folder one” and “folder two”.

Though it made them a little organised, I still could not figure out which information was where. In just a few months, the folder got filled to the brim with countless voice notes. Everything made me super frustrated.

4, I Was Spending More Time Than I Was Saving

According to a landmark study by the McKinsey Global Institute, the average worker spends roughly 1.8 hours every single day or about 9.3 hours per week, just searching for and gathering information.  And this was exactly what was happening with me.

Typing everything felt extremely boring and time consuming. I could not put my thoughts into words. Therefore, I always prioritised voice notes. It is much faster. But what I did not think about is how I would be able to find specific information.

It does not really matter how much time it took to make notes if it is taking you forever to find them. I had to go through each of them or dive deep in.

Therefore, it did not actually make my workflow fast and efficient but even slower and more annoying. I needed a better way to capture ideas without sacrificing accessibility.

How I Finally Stopped Losing My Notes

Avoiding taking notes was not the solution. It just has to go through a few steps to become truly useful.

Therefore, I decided to turn the tables. Here’s everything that I did that eliminated all of my worries and struggles.

1. Started Converting Every Recording Into Searchable Text

I started off by converting my important audio to text, and that is when my world changed. Instead of listening to every voice note, I converted every crucial piece of information I recorded into transcripts.

Everything feels much easier since then. All I had to do was upload my recordings, and it automatically turned them into polished text.

Once my recordings turned into text; I could find it very easily. I just have to put the keyword related to what I want, and within a second I locate the information I need.

2. Cleaned Up Every Transcript Before Saving It

I realised that saving unnecessary information will only confuse me. That’s when the editable facilities helped me a lot and made a major difference in how I view the notes.

All I do is remove the jargon and filler words. Additionally, I fix any errors and separate large blocks of text into a more reader friendly format.

If the recording covers multiple topics, I create headings for each section so I can navigate the document more easily later. Though it took a little time, it made things way more manageable and useful.

3. I Organised Notes by Topics Instead of Date

There is one more change I made which further facilitates things for me. Instead of saving the notes by date, I saved them by topic, like what they are about or the type of information they have.

This simple adjustment made it much easier to locate information. I naturally remembered the subject of a note rather than the day I recorded it. No matter how much time has passed, I can find what I need exactly.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, recording ideas is just half of the process. The other half includes organising them into a more manageable and useful manner.

However with tools like Clideo Video editor, transforming speech to text becomes an easy task. All you have to do is, put the recording in, do actions as instructed and voila, you are done.

Hence, by converting my audio to text, I made my notes searchable and like an organised library. It’s a simple change, but one that has saved me time, reduced frustration, and ensured that valuable ideas never get lost again.