Don't Rely on Tech to Achieve Your Goals

Sometimes, it just takes a little elbow grease.

Technology is wonderful. It can help us achieve our goals faster and more effectively. But I believe that this has bred overreliance. Technology cannot do everything for us, and when it can't do something, we can find ourselves abandoning our goals completely.

"We can't show this in a cashflow model, our software can't produce it so we're not going to try to do it"

To illustrate this point, I'm going to tell you a deeply personal story about my own struggles and skill development. If this isn't your bag, and you'd rather stick to reading about the financial markets on LinkedIn, then feel free to close the article down now. But if you continue reading, I'm hopeful that my experience will help give you a fresh perspective on the subject of technology overreliance.

What Technology Did for Me

When I transitioned, I was dead focused on what I saw in the mirror. I honed my makeup skills, and employed technology to change my face and body. I used HRT, electrolysis, laser hair removal, and various other cosmetic procedures to present as well as my genes would allow. And I'm now very proud of my reflection and have been for some time (those occasional dysphoric and dysmorphic episodes notwithstanding).

Then one day, I delivered a presentation to people who hadn't met me before, and one piece of feedback was that I looked great, but my voice "gave me away". This was a very personal comment, particularly at a work event from a stranger, but it was nonetheless honest and constructive, so rather than call the guy an arsehole and tell him to get lost, I reflected on his words during the long drive home.

I'm now past the point of caring whether or not I "pass". Studying gender and trans history and engaging with others in the community has taught me that one's ability to "pass" is not relevant to the validity of one's gender identity, and the reality is that most out trans people pass to most people, most of the time. No one passes all the time, evidenced by the fact that sometimes cisgender people get misgendered.

As things stand, technology has come to the rescue with this, too, in the form of AI analysis:

The Limitations of Technology

I'm not going to lie, that my voice was considered masculine was difficult to stomach. I've always had voice dysphoria, but because I now liked what I saw in the mirror so much, and as technology couldn't help me change it, I put up with my masculine voice, hoping my visual appearance would carry me.

Feminising HRT (which consists of testosterone-blockers, oestrogen, and progesterone) has no effect on feminising one's voice. It is not female hormones that raise it, but testosterone that deepens it (one thing that my trans male brothers have the long end of the stick on) and once you've been through male puberty, the testosterone has done its work. Because of this, I'd resigned myself to always having my masculine voice. Technology couldn't help me. There's vocal cord surgery, but this has varied results and - speaking frankly - there is a significantly more important procedure I want to get done first.

That said, I'd heard of "feminising vocal training" and did some research. I learned that there are two core components of feminising one's voice - raising pitch, and minimising weight. Pitch deals with how high or low your voice is, and weight is the "scratchiness" of the voice.

So I worked at it this year, and here's the result:

This video showcases two vocal samples, from March 2024 (pre-training) and November 2024 (with training). The same microphone and recording software was used for both samples.

In March, you'll hear and see from the spectrogram that my voice was lower, and the reduced parts at the top of the graph evidence it is lighter.

This is outstanding progress and I couldn't be more delighted.

Did technology help me? No.

Could technology realistically help me? No.

But could hard work help me? Yes.

In Conclusion

Just because technology can't help you, doesn't mean you should abandon hope of achieving your goals. Your goals are important, and where technology is limited, there are often ways you can do something. Often, this will involve a lot of hard work, and the acquisition of new skills.

Where that perfect back-office system doesn't yet exist, code one yourself.

Where that cashflow modelling software can't produce the models you want, learn to use Excel.

And where you want to change your speech, you can. For me, it was feminisation. For you, it might be minimising filler words, sounding more assertive or confident, being louder, or anything else.