What is touch typing?

Touch typing is the discipline that encompasses a set of techniques that focus on optimal finger positioning on the keyboard in order to achieve maximum efficiency while typing. This, in turn, results in an increase of typing productivity which lessens the time it takes to complete a writing task.

Why should you learn touch typing?

Being agile and fast sliding through the keyboard is a great skill to have if you usually spend time with your computer. It gives you the ability to get things done quickly and with practice it allows you to even match your processing speed with that of typing, which enhances what is described as a flow experience (a period of time when you completely immerse yourself into a task and redirect all of your energy to it, which heightens creativity and happinness).

If you’re into journaling, this could have a significant impact in the quality of your articles as you are able to bring more ideas onto the page and enter this flow state.

Each person is different with their goals, maybe reaching 60 words per minute is a great accomplishment and more than enough to achieve a higher productivity, while for others it could be 100, as an example.

How can I get started?

>Finger positioning

In order to take a step into the world of touch typing all you need to do is open the browser and google “touch typing technique”; there are tons of youtube videos and online resources that teach you finger positioning.

>Try NOT looking at the keys while typing

Another thing you should do is avoid looking at the keys while typing, as this would seriously hold you back from being faster on the keyboard. We should strive to build good habits from ground zero.

>Aim for Accuracy, NOT speed

Once you know how to place your fingers on the keyboard and which finger should go to each key, you have to aim for at least a 95+ accuracy and forget about typing speed.

The reason behind it is that you ought to first eliminate the old neural pathways that led you to adopt a bad typing technique and replace it with good typing habits, which will be the base upon which you will construct your efficient typing.

Think about it this way, if you were to focus of typing fast, in the future you would have reinforced bad typing habits that would signify in you reaching a plateau earlier than if you had followed the right technique and reinforced good typing habits. The time that you spend in the early stages concentrating on effectiveness will save you time in the later stages.

So, once you start hitting an accuracy of 95+ you can start trying to type faster.

There are tons of online webpages that you can use to level up your typing and that measure your typing speed but I personally don’t like the ones designed to compete with other players such as nitrotype; mainly due to the emphasis on speed rather than accuracy, which, in my view, harms good habit building for beginners.

How fast am I going to improve?

One of the most crucial things to understand before beginning to learn touch typing is that in the earlier stages of your learning you’re going to be improving rather slowly and here’s why:

• Bad Habits. Your brain is filled with “bad” neural connections.
  If you’re reading this article then you’ve probably been practicing typing for ages with the incorrect finger positioning on the keyboard.
  Every time you perform a habit (in this case typing with incorrect form) the neural connections associated with this habit strengthen so that it’ll become easier next time to perform the same habit more efficiently, enhancing a faster signaling between the associated neurons.
  But what happens when the habit could be improved substantially? That in order to build a better habit linked to a certain activity you’ll firstly have to get rid of the old one, and the more strengthened the neural connections of the old habit are, the greater amount of work will need to be done to get rid of it.
  In conclusion, in order for you to type decently with a correct form your brain is going to need more time than one would expect to get the hang of the new finger positioning technique. Thus, the real struggle will be in your technique adaptation, so don’t worry if at first you don’t progress at a fast pace as it is the most difficult stage of the process. This is also the reason why you should focus on accuracy rather than speed, to firstly build the new habit and get rid of the old one as fast as possible.

Once you feel you are used to the correct technique and you get 95+ accuracy percentages you should progressively focus on upgrading your typing speed while maintaining the 95-100 range of accuracy. If at a certain speed you cannot keep in that range then you should slow down a little and keep trying.

Habit Forming and Goal Setting

Simply put, it is better to practice 10 minutes a day rather than practicing 2 hours a day and ending up worn out and without any interest to continue improving.

Without turning this into a habit you will not be able to get rid of your old finger positioning and notice significant improvements in your typing speed.

It is also important to set yourself some micro goals along the way to keep you engaged in the process of mastering touch typing such as increasing accuracy percentages, wpm…

Personal Experience

Before deciding to learn touch typing, I tested myself to see how many words per minute I was able to achieve. My record was at about 45 words per minute (which represented average typing speed). Test was performed on monkeytype.

I decided to learn one of the beginner and correct techniques of finger positioning and focused primarily on accuracy and only typing letters of the alphabet until I hit consistently 75 wpm in the 95-100% accuracy range.

The first day of learning touch typing wasn’t what I expected at all. I overall managed to only achieve 22 wpm due to my brain not being used to the finger positioning technique but, with a little bit more practice I achieved an average of 43 wpm at a 97% accuracy on my first week (each person is unique so values will differ).

Over the next two weeks I was able to get better accuracy so I gradually increased my focus on speed, practicing each day and averaging 60 wpm (which was a game changer for me).

A month went by and I was consistently striking 75 wpm in the desired accuracy range and I decided to switch from monkeytype to keybr to add up symbols and numbers.

Today I’m currently hitting about 80 wpm overall within the accuracy range and I’ve seen significant improvements in my article and in my code writing.

CONCLUSION

It only takes 10 minutes a day for what could potentially save you a lot of time in the future.

Even if you don’t think you’ll use it, it is definitely a skill that should be taken into account and added to our toolkit.

Links I used:

Keybr: https://www.keybr.com/

Monkeytype: https://monkeytype.com/