In his book, “Brainblocks,” clinician Dr. Theo Tsaousides discusses the brain’s natural give-and-take tug-of-war of speed vs. accuracy. His expert rendition of the brain’s conflict between speed and accuracy makes what we do as stenographers seem even more amazing! Here’s what he had to say:

“Your brain can process things fast or it can process them accurately. These two qualities, speed and accuracy, are always is competition. As one goes up the other goes down. You can do things fast or you can do them well. Under normal circumstances, it is impossible to increase both your speed and your accuracy.

Efficiency is the ideal balance between speed and accuracy. It refers to the highest speed at which you can process information without making mistakes. Imagine that you’re reading an interesting article in your favorite magazine. Efficiency is the length of time it takes you to finish reading the article and to also understand the content. If you read it faster than your brain can process, you will miss some of the information in the article, you will not pick up some of the details, and you will forget it faster. If you slow down and read it at a more leisurely pace, you will process, understand, and remember the information in the article much better. But you may be late for work!

Impatience happens when you favor speed over accuracy. Instead of taking your time, you choose to do things quickly. Instead of waiting for things to fall in place, you want things to happen faster. But inevitably, doing things faster increases the chances of making more mistakes, which you have to go back and fix.”

After reading that passage, how amazing is it that we train our brains to master both speed and accuracy?! Awesome!