The Impossible Goal

The current world record for stenographic court reporting is 360 words per minute of question-and-answer material.

Mark Kislingbury's going to attempt to break his own record within the next year or so.

I've stepped forward to try to break it as well.

Right now I've passed a 270 Q&A at the State contest level, and I've passed the Literary and Legal Opinion portions of the National contest.  I am nowhere NEAR the speed I'd need to be at.  It is utterly absurd to think that I could gain the speed needed in less than a year and a half.  Ridiculous.  The next morning after I put my name in for it, I woke up thinking "OMG WHAT HAVE I DONE????"

But I want to see if it's possible.  I want to see how far I can get.   And if I can gain an insane amount of speed in that short time, others can as well.  Trust me.

Plus I plain need a shot in the arm or a kick in the pants or both.

My regimen so far is at LEAST three times through a Magnum Steno video per day, once in the morning, once before dinner, and once before bed, with hopefully a few more goes throughout normal working hours -- at 300 wpm literary and 350 Q&A.  After the speed contest this year, I'll speed them up past 400.

I'm also shortening the dickens out of my already-short writing.  I'm going through my Magnum Steno book and shoveling entries into my Anki Droid flash card app -- a neat app, mind you -- so I can easily review briefs/phrases every day.  It's amazing how that's worked to get the briefs/phrases into my head so they eventually come out my fingers.  My experience is, the less strokes I take to write something, the less tired I am and the more accurate I write.  Plus it's more fun to do my job when my fingers aren't on fire.

I'm going to blog through my progress as we journey, so stay tuned!

And think on this -- if I can make it happen, so can you.