This morning, after I published my article about the Dedao Recording Desk, a friend left a comment asking what the recording card was actually like.

She said she wanted to get one for her daughter, who had just started university.

I replied that we could arrange a Tencent Meeting later, and I would demonstrate it live.

After replying, I thought about it. I had used this card for more than half a year, gone from one to two, and carried one with me every day. But to explain the whole thing properly, I still needed to sit down and sort through it. So I decided to write it down first, and make clear what I had actually done with it.

Before buying the card, I used the software

I started using Dedao Brain late last year, when it was still called Get Notes. Within a month, I found it very easy to use. I spoke into it, and it turned my speech into text by itself. That was much faster than typing every character, and I did not have to organize everything item by item afterwards.

Only once I had become comfortable with the software did I notice that they had released hardware.

Around New Year, I saw a new product launch: a recording card for 699 yuan. I did not order it immediately. The reason was simple. I knew nothing about Dedao's pricing at the time and did not know how long the 699-yuan price would last. Just over ten days later, it had gone back to 888 yuan.

The difference was nearly two hundred yuan. I was honestly a little annoyed, feeling that I had let a lower price slip away for no reason.

But I bought the card anyway. Before then, I had already worked out that what I wanted was not really an audio recorder.

I did not need a lovely-sounding audio file

I already had a podcasting setup at home.

I used to make podcasts, so I had a professional recording console and a microphone. That equipment recorded much better sound than this card, with a fuller sound too. The problem came afterwards. I had to export what I had recorded, bring it onto the computer, then upload it to the software before it could become readable text. That extra step was enough to put me off. The equipment sat there. I had clearly recorded something, but I never got around to doing anything with it.

I did not need a lovely-sounding audio file. I just needed a lot of words I could read.

At the time, I did not say much each day. I was doing less teaching and painting alone at home. Added together, the time I spent speaking in a whole day might not even have reached half an hour. People need to talk. Speak too little, and you get out of practice. I could feel it myself. When I started talking, I stumbled. I had to go around a complete sentence twice before getting it out.

There were no fewer things in my head, though. Thoughts while painting, thoughts while looking at something, a sentence that suddenly occurred to me: they all piled up in there. I have a bit of a perfectionist streak. When there was too much to do, I wanted to leave it until I had a clear block of time to do it properly. But the pile kept growing, and the bigger it became, the less I wanted to touch it.

The feeling was very specific, like a tangle of string. At first, there is only one loose end. You leave it alone, it winds around itself, and eventually becomes a whole knot. You look at it and cannot even summon the will to untangle it.

I bought this card because I wanted to stop things tangling up. When a thought came, I could say a sentence into it and be done. That thread in my head was cut there and then. Speaking was also a way of organizing. Getting the words out meant thinking them through once already.

It gave me what I had wanted before buying it: a way to record what I saw and heard each day without pressure.

After the card arrived

The first obvious difference was that I did not have to prepare.

It is small. I can put it in my pocket or leave it on the table. When a thought comes, one press starts recording. Afterwards, I do not have to do anything. As soon as I open the app, the card's content syncs automatically, with the text already transcribed. No cable to connect it to a computer, no manually importing files, no remembering which button to click. As for the battery, one full charge lasts quite a few days. I have never filled its storage either. Those two things barely enter my mind.

That sounds unremarkable, but it determines whether you will actually use it.

Between something that works well and something you will actually use, there are often just one or two extra steps.

Another thing happened: it helped my ability to express myself grow back.

During the period when I stumbled over my words, it was not that I did not know how to speak. I was speaking so little that I was out of practice. Once I had the card, I would say a few things into it every day, all about that day's life: what I had painted, seen, or thought about. The more I spoke, the more easily the words came. I did not think of it as practice. I just said whatever came to mind, and as I kept talking, that awkwardness gradually passed on its own.

Later, when I went back to look, what I saw was coherent text.

When I spoke into it, the words were scattered, one sentence after another, with pauses, repetitions, mistakes and corrections. But the text it organized made sense. Reading it, I had a complete passage. That difference mattered. If what I saw afterwards had been fragments strewn everywhere, I probably would not have wanted to give it a second look.

Now I make several recordings a day. Sometimes there is only one in a whole day, because something has been weighing on me and I want to explain it clearly. Sometimes I record five or six, saying whatever strikes me as I go. I do not look back much after recording. I just let them stay there.

After more than four months, I added a second card

The immediate reason for adding a second card was very specific. One livestream was already running when another began, and my one card could not be in two places at once. Some livestreams have no replay. Miss them, and you really have missed them. Around that time, I was following quite a few AI-related bloggers. They would go live now and then, often at overlapping times. Sometimes two were talking at once on the same evening.

That was how the second card came into my setup. Strictly speaking, it was my mom's.

This May, I bought her one so that she could record things whenever she wanted.

There was a reason behind the idea. Mom usually keeps a small notebook and writes things by hand: what vegetables she bought that day, how much she spent, what medicine she took. This year, I went with my parents to the hospital several times. Sitting outside the consulting room, waiting, I thought how much easier it would be to keep these things electronically. Sometimes, after a long spell without writing, she would put pen to paper and get stuck, having to stop and think about how to write a character.

There was something else I wanted even more. She could casually record that she had felt dizzy today, what medicine she had just taken, how much she weighed, or what she had eaten, and then ask AI to help look for any relationships among the records. For example, she might feel uncomfortable and heavy, with a gray sky outside, and when AI said it would rain soon, she could feel more at ease. Often, when people cannot see what lies behind something, they do not have enough information. AI could fill in the missing piece. Once it was filled in, they might feel less anxious.

But she could not get into using it.

Two months passed, and the card had barely been touched. I did not blame her. This is difficult for many older people to begin with. It is a question of how they understand it, rather than whether they are willing. Still, I felt a little uncomfortable at the time. The money had been spent, the membership paid for, and it was all sitting there unused.

Later, I came to terms with it. I might as well take it back and use it myself. That settled it.

How I divide the work between two cards

The two cards have clear roles for me. I do not use one today and the other tomorrow at random.

One stays with me. I put it in my bag. Whether I go out painting, take a walk, or ride the subway, I press it when a thought comes. It goes wherever I go, recording in all kinds of situations. The content is mixed: a thought about painting, a complaint about a gallery, something I need to do the next day. Everyday life goes into this card.

The other stays at home, specifically for livestreams and courses. It has a fixed spot near the desk. If there is a livestream in the evening, I turn it on. It might record two or three sessions in a row. The content on this card is orderly, all of one kind: classes I want to listen to again.

Separating them this way makes things quick to find later. If I want something from a particular livestream, I go to the card at home. If I want a sentence I thought of on a walk one day, I go to the one I carry. With everything mixed on a single card, hundreds of recordings piled together would take more effort to search through.

I only discovered this after using them for a while. I did not plan different roles at the beginning. I just brought in a second card when things clashed. After a few weeks, it naturally became this way.

One last thing, and the most important one

These days, I rarely go through the recordings myself.

I used to take notes so I could review them later, looking back from time to time because I was afraid of forgetting. I kept up that habit for years. But I actually went back to them far less often than I had imagined I would. Most notes simply lay there once they were made, never opened again.

Now it is different. I hardly read these records. AI is what actually reads them.

The words I record each day are laying a foundation for my future self.

When I write articles, work on projects, or make plans, I ask AI to retrieve these records as background for the writing. It remembers more than I do and finds things faster. I ask whether I have talked about a subject before. It goes looking, then tells me what I said and on which day.

Foundations are interesting. You do not need to look back at them every day. You would not dig up the floor for no reason to check whether the concrete underneath was sound. But when you build a house, the foundation has to be there for it to stand.

So my view of recording has changed. I used to record things so I would not forget them. Now I record because, if I want to make something happen later, I first need material. While you are gathering it, the material may not seem like much. But when you need to use it, whether you have it in hand makes a big difference.

Tee Sang | Painting, writing, and growing with AI