Write Documentation 3x Faster by Talking to Yourself Like a Madman

There's a developer in my coworking space who thinks I've completely lost it. Every morning, he watches me mumble to myself for an hour, occasionally gesturing at my screen like I'm arguing with an invisible colleague.

What he doesn't realize is that I'm writing documentation three times faster than anyone else on my team.

The Documentation Problem

Let's be honest: developers hate writing documentation. It's tedious, it's boring, and by the time you're done, the code has already changed.

But here's the real issue: documentation requires a completely different mode of thinking than coding.

Coding is precise, symbolic, structured. Documentation is narrative, explanatory, flowing. Switching between these modes is mentally expensive. That's why most devs procrastinate on docs until they're impossible to avoid.

Why Voice Changes Everything

Speaking is inherently narrative. When you explain something out loud, you naturally tell a story. You provide context. You anticipate questions. You use the kind of friendly, accessible language that makes documentation actually useful.

Try this experiment: explain to a rubber duck (or real colleague) how a function in your codebase works. Record yourself. Then transcribe it.

Congratulations—you just wrote documentation. And I bet it took about 30 seconds.

The Workflow That Works

Here's my exact process for voice-first documentation:

Step 1: Brain Dump

Open my voice-to-text tool and just... talk. I explain what the code does, why it exists, what the edge cases are, and what might confuse future developers. No editing, no self-censorship. Pure stream of consciousness.

This usually takes 2-3 minutes per function or module.

Step 2: Light Cleanup

The raw transcription is readable but messy. I spend about 30 seconds fixing obvious errors and breaking the text into paragraphs. I'm not aiming for perfection—I'm aiming for clarity.

Step 3: Add Structure

I add headers, code examples, and any formatting that didn't come through in the voice transcription. This takes another minute or two.

Total time: 4-5 minutes for documentation that previously took 15+.

Voice Commands for Documentation

Once you get comfortable, you can even speak formatting commands inline:

• "New paragraph" - Starts a new paragraph
• "Code block, function example, end code block" - Creates formatted code sections
• "Heading two, authentication flow" - Creates a proper H2 header
• "Bullet point" - Starts a list item

It feels unnatural at first. After a week, it's second nature.

The Quality Surprise

Here's what I didn't expect: voice-generated documentation is often better than typed documentation.

When I type, I tend toward terse, technical language. When I speak, I naturally explain things the way I would to a colleague. I include the "why" along with the "what."

My team has actually commented that my docs have improved. They don't know I'm talking to myself like a lunatic to produce them.

Bonus: Code Comments

The same approach works for inline comments. Instead of typing cryptic one-liners, I speak my reasoning:

"Comment: We're checking for null here because the API sometimes returns undefined when the user doesn't exist, and that edge case caused a production incident in January."

That's the kind of comment future developers will actually appreciate.

Try It Tomorrow

Pick one piece of code that needs documentation. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Talk through what the code does, speaking as if you're explaining it to a new team member.

Transcribe and lightly edit.

I bet you'll be surprised at how much you documented—and how little effort it took.