On paper, typing a note and speaking one seem like they should take about the same amount of time. In practice, on an active jobsite, they're not close — and the difference compounds over the course of a week.
The real cost of typing isn't the typing
It's everything around it: stopping what you're doing, pulling off gloves, unlocking a phone, finding the right app, and typing with your thumbs while standing in awkward light or bad weather. The actual note might take twenty seconds to write, but the interruption around it often takes two or three minutes.
Speaking captures more detail, faster
Most people talk far faster than they type, and speech naturally captures more context — tone, specifics, sequence of events — than a rushed typed note usually does. A voice note recorded in the moment tends to be more complete than a typed one recorded from memory later.
Written notes still have their place
For anything that needs to be scanned quickly, shared visually, or referenced precisely (a measurement, a part number), written notes or photos are still the better format. The goal isn't to eliminate written documentation — it's to remove the friction that causes documentation to get skipped altogether.
The best format is the one you'll actually use
A perfect documentation system that's too slow to use in practice gets abandoned within a week. A voice note captured hands-free while you're still mid-task, without breaking stride, is far more likely to actually happen — which is the entire premise behind wearable tools like the Ruck Anvil.