Voice Journaling vs Writing: What 130 Hours of Talking on Walks Taught Me

Voice journaling isn’t better than writing; it’s different. Writing is good for working a thought out carefully. Talking is better for catching it before you tidy it up: you can’t backspace, you speak faster than you type, and the recording keeps your tone and hesitations. Many people use both: talk first, write later.

Originally published as “130 Hours of Talking to Myself on Walks: What I Learned”. First published 16 Oct 2026.

By Chenxi

For the past few months, I’ve been recording myself talking on walks. So far that’s 130 hours of audio, 513 entries, and more than 300 places. Saying that out loud still makes me laugh a little.

Somewhere in those 130 hours, talking to myself stopped being an experiment and became a habit. And that habit turned out to be how I came to understand myself better: noticing what I really think, what I actually feel, and getting to know the person underneath the tidy version I usually present.

It started with one walk. I live in Stratford, in east London, right next to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. It’s a lot of green space and waterways, and London in general is a wonderful city for walking. So I walk. A lot.

One afternoon I spent over an hour wandering the park, and somewhere along the way I started thinking out loud. Half-formed thoughts, said aloud, the way you talk to yourself when nobody’s around. And a few of those sentences suddenly untangled something I’d been stuck on for a while.

Then I got home, sat down to write it all down, and couldn’t remember exactly how I’d said it. The idea was still there, roughly. But the words that had made it click were gone.

That small, annoying moment was the starting point for Yuho, and for everything below. Here’s what I learned.

Why talking stuck as a habit when writing didn’t

I never have to sit down to journal. I just go for a walk, which I was going to do anyway. That’s the whole reason it stuck. There’s no blank page to face and no time to set aside. The walk is the habit, and the talking just comes along with it.

What I wanted that afternoon in the park was simple. Keep the phone in my pocket, earphones in, and just talk. No tapping at a screen, no stopping to think about the tool.

That became the core of Yuho. You start a recording and forget about it. Lock the screen or switch apps and it keeps going. If a call comes in, it pauses and picks up again in the same recording when the call ends. Photos you take in the app along the way attach to that walk. And if the app ever crashes, what you’ve already said is recovered. When nothing gets in the way, you keep doing it. That’s how one walk turned into 513 entries.

Writing: an editor built into your fingers

When you type, you’re writing and editing at the same time. You start a sentence, delete half of it, and try a better word. You soften the part that sounds too harsh. You remove the line that makes you look petty. By the time you’re done, the page is tidy, and the thought you started with has been neatly folded away.

Most of the time that editor is a virtue. If I’m writing an email to a colleague, or an essay like this one, I want it in the room. But when you’re trying to capture what you actually think, it gets in the way. You end up writing the summary of what you felt rather than the feeling itself.

Talking: you can’t backspace

You can’t delete a sentence once it’s out of your mouth. You can correct yourself, but the correction stays on the record too. You hear yourself say “I’m fine with it,” then pause, then say “actually, no, I’m not.” That pause and that “actually” are often the most honest part of the whole thing.

Speech is also fast. Most of us can talk far faster than we can type, so there’s no time for the internal editor to step in. The thought comes out half-formed, rambling and contradictory, which is exactly how thoughts are before we tidy them up.

A written sentence is flat. A spoken one isn’t. When you play back your own voice, you hear things you would never have written down: tiredness, excitement you were trying to downplay, the moment you slow down because something matters. The words are only part of the story. The voice carries the rest.

What a recording keeps that writing doesn’t: place

When I listen back, I remember where I was. In Yuho, once a walk is transcribed, every sentence is laid out along the places you walked, a bit like lyrics, with your photos in between. Seeing the words along the route, next to the photos I took, makes old entries feel less like notes and more like being back there.

…and the way you said it

That afternoon in the park, I didn’t just lose an idea. I lost the phrasing that made the idea make sense. Now I can scroll back through the route and replay any moment exactly as I said it. When something clicks mid-walk, I can go back and hear exactly how it clicked.

So, is voice journaling better than writing?

This is the real lesson, and the others all lead here. Those rambling, unpolished voice notes feel closer to my real self than any carefully worded notes I’ve ever written. My written notes were always a slightly better version of me. My voice notes are just me.

Because I kept doing it, walk after walk, I kept hearing that unedited version. The “actually, no” moments. The things I said before I’d decided how I felt about them. Listening back, I started noticing what I really think and feel, not just what I’d have written down.

I don’t think speaking is better than writing in every way. Writing is where you work things out carefully. But for capturing what’s actually going on in your head, before you’ve had a chance to make it presentable, talking gets much closer. Do that often enough, and you start to get to know the person doing the talking.

When to talk, when to write

Whether you call it voice journaling or audio journaling, the comparison with writing comes down to what each one is good at. After 513 entries, this is roughly how I split it:

Talk when…	Write when…
You want to capture a thought before it’s tidy	You want to work a thought out carefully
You’re walking, commuting or your hands are busy	You’re at a desk with time to think
You want to keep your tone and hesitations	You need something finished: an email, an essay, a plan
You don’t know yet what you think	You know what you think and want to say it well

• Talk to capture. Get the raw version out while it’s still raw.
• Write to work it out. Sit down later and shape the bits worth shaping.
• Talk when you’re moving. A walk is the easiest place to start, because you’re already there.
• Write for other people. Emails and essays need the editor in the room.
• Talk first, write later. For me, the two work best as a pair, not as rivals.

How to try voice journaling on your next walk

You don’t need any special tool to start. Your phone’s voice memo app will do. Next time you go for a walk, put your earphones in, start recording, and just talk. Don’t aim for anything profound. Describe what you see, what’s on your mind, what you’re avoiding thinking about. Let yourself ramble. Let yourself contradict yourself.

The only rule is not to edit. That’s the whole point. And then do it again on the next walk.

If you want the step-by-step version, with prompts and what to do with the recordings afterwards, I wrote a separate guide to journaling while walking.

If you find that you like it, and want something built specifically for this, that’s why I made Yuho. It’s a private voice diary for iPhone, designed for long, hands-free recordings, so you can keep your phone in your pocket and just walk and talk. Each walk’s voice, photos and route are kept together, which is what I mean by a walking voice journal. Your recordings, transcripts and photos are stored on your iPhone, not in the cloud. Transcription is optional. When you choose AI transcription or a recap, the audio or text is sent securely for processing and the result comes back to your phone. The core features are free.

You can find it at yuho.io or on the App Store.

But honestly, whichever tool you use, I hope you try it. Go for a walk and say the thing you wouldn’t write down. Keep at it. You might be surprised by who you hear.

FAQ

Is voice journaling as effective as writing?

It does a different job. Writing helps you reason something through carefully, one sentence at a time. Talking catches what you think before you’ve edited it into something presentable. Neither one wins in every situation. Use whichever fits the moment, or both: talk on a walk to get it out, then write later if you want to work it into something finished.

Why does talking feel more honest than writing?

For me, it’s because you can’t backspace. When you type, you delete and soften as you go. When you talk, the correction stays on the record too: you hear yourself say “I’m fine with it,” then “actually, no.” The recording also keeps your tone, so you hear the tiredness or excitement you’d never have written down. That’s my experience from 130 hours of recordings, not a research finding.

Do I need to transcribe voice journal entries?

No. A transcript makes entries easier to skim and search, which is useful once you have a lot of them. But the audio is the part that keeps how you said something: the pauses, the tone, the moment you slowed down. Transcription is optional. Plenty of people keep just the audio, and plenty keep both.

Can I voice journal with my phone’s voice memo app?

Yes, and it’s a good way to start. Any recorder works for trying the habit. A dedicated voice journal app starts to help when entries get long, when you want them organised by date and place, or when you want photos and your route kept alongside the audio instead of in separate apps. More on Voice Memos vs a voice journal.

What’s a good way to start voice journaling?

On your next walk, put your earbuds in, start recording before you leave, and just talk. Describe what you see and what’s on your mind. Don’t aim for anything profound and don’t edit. Stop when you get home. Then do it again on the next walk; the habit matters more than any single entry. Here’s the full guide to journaling while walking.