Maximum stenographic speed and endurance are achieved not through the lowest possible stroke count, but by using simpler, phonetic strokes that minimize cognitive load and eliminate internal hesitation under pressure.

That sentence will irritate some people. Good. Irritation means the idea landed.

You’ve had sessions where the writing just flowed — where you weren’t thinking about your strokes, where words arrived at your fingers without the internal negotiation. You finished those jobs less tired than easier ones where something kept snagging. That wasn’t luck.

And you’ve had the other kind. The ones where you gripped harder as the day went on. Where the briefs you trusted at 9 AM started requiring confirmation by 3 PM. Where you could feel yourself clenching — not your fists, but your decision-making. That two-millisecond pause before committing to a stroke. Multiplied by a thousand words an hour. Multiplied by nine hours.

Carl Lewis understood the mechanism before researchers had words for it.

Lewis was routinely last at the 40-meter mark. Then he’d win by ten yards. Someone finally studied the film closely enough to see what he was doing differently at the 60-meter mark: nothing. His breathing was the same. His form was the same.

While every other runner was pushing harder — clenched jaw, tight fists — Lewis held form. He didn’t add effort. He maintained it. Researchers called it the 85% Rule. Maximum output doesn’t come from maximum effort. It comes from sustainable effort held clean under pressure.

His competitors weren’t weaker athletes. They were running the wrong strategy.

Most reporters at 240 words per minute are running the same one.

When testimony speeds up, the intuitive response is to reach for the shortest possible stroke. The brief. The phrase. The two-word combination drilled for exactly this moment. Push harder. And that’s exactly when things fall apart — because the brief that looked efficient on paper now requires a half-second of internal confirmation that doesn’t exist at 240 words per minute. The stroke that was supposed to save time is the thing spending it.

That’s not fatigue. That’s what happens when the system you’re running costs more under pressure than it saves.

Simpler strokes don’t require confirmation.

Strokes that don’t require confirmation don’t generate hesitation.

Strokes that don’t generate hesitation don’t make you clench.

Reporters who aren’t clenching at the 60-meter mark have something left when everyone else has already spent everything trying to go faster. The math isn’t in the stroke count. It’s in what each stroke costs.

The reporters who last longest in this profession — the ones still sharp at 4 PM on a brutal job, the ones whose rough drafts look like final copy — aren’t trying hardest. They’re running clean. They built a system that holds form under pressure instead of one that demands more from them exactly when they have less to give.

Stop counting strokes. Start asking which ones make you clench.

Tom Fernicola has been a court reporter for 37 years, specializing in complex litigation in New York City. He is the creator of BREVITY, a stenographic writing system built around cognitive load science, and the author of two books: BREVITY: Write Simply and The Science of Steno: Why Court Reporting Is So Hard — and What the Math Proves, soon available at brevitysteno.com.