Why More Choices Make You Slower
Why the "fastest" steno system is actually the slowest, if you follow the rules
Every court reporter has heard the promise: If you learn enough briefs, phrases, and tricks, you’ll write at 300, 400, even 500 words per minute.
It sounds like magic. Magnum Steno, the most famous system built on this idea, sells exactly that dream. But here’s the real question:
What happens if you actually try to follow all those rules in real time?
The answer is not speed. It’s stall-out.
The Weight of Constant Decisions
Magnum Steno encourages reporters to evaluate their options constantly:
Stroke it out or brief it?
Phrase it or not?
Use the inversion stroke?
Drop a syllable or a consonant?
Each of these strategies is real. And each one, in theory, saves strokes.
But stacked together in a live setting, they create an impossible task: choosing between multiple outlines in the fraction of a second you have to write the word.
What the Brain Can (and Can’t) Do
Psychology gives us the hard limits:
Working memory can juggle only 4 ± 1 things at once.
A single simple choice takes about 200–250 milliseconds.
Adding multiple options increases the decision time to 400–600 milliseconds.
Now layer that onto stenographic speed:
At 200 WPM, you get 300 ms per word.
At 300 WPM, you get 200 ms per word.
See the problem? The time it takes to decide which outline to use is longer than the time you actually have to write it.
The Collapse of Speed
Do the math:
If every choice takes ~500 ms, the absolute ceiling is 120 WPM.
Factor in hesitation, fatigue, and error correction, and you’re looking at 40–60 WPM as a realistic maximum if you try to follow every Magnum Steno rule.
That’s not “world record” speed. That’s beginner-level speed.
The Principle Is Universal
And here’s where it gets bigger than steno:
In music, a pianist doesn’t pause mid-piece to weigh three different fingerings. They drill one until it’s automatic.
In sports, a tennis player doesn’t stop to think about which grip to use while returning a 120 mph serve. They practice until the return is reflexive.
In stenography, you don’t multiply outlines and rules if you want speed. You reduce them.
It’s common sense. If you want something to become automatic, you don’t add more choices. You strip them away.