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Alternative Title: Stop typing like your Grandmother 😂

Touch typing is the ability to type without looking at the keyboard, using all the fingers in a somewhat optimal position to maximize speed and precision.

It’s one of those skills and habits that will multiply the potential of others related to using your keyboard.

If you learn how to type the correct keys using most of the fingers in your hand, you’ll have a much easier time with:

1. writing Blogs Posts or other textual endeavors
2. Programming
3. Faster to chat with your friends online!

In short, mastering this particular skill will considerably improve any skill that relies on some form of typing.

I have even noticed, for example, that even my ANKI studies have become considerably faster! When using “type” Fields on your Cards, it helps that I can study from my Computer.

As with everything, I mostly Self-Taught myself how to type using all the fingers in my hand. Some of the things that helped were playing insane Korean rhythm games (ever heard of DJ Max?), but this is a case where I just developed the ability naturally through use, later learned about it more formally, and polished it!

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After reading some interesting typing statistics and trying to teach a beginner on how to type correctly (which, to be honest, felt more or less like teaching my grandmother on how to use her phone), I decided to make a more conscious effort to improve my speed and accuracy on typing.

Here’s what I’d advise if you want to do the same.

1. Measure your current Typing Speed

First, go online and measure your writing speed in words per minute (wpm). 

I quickly googled “Measure Typing Speed” and found https://www.livechat.com/typing-speed-test/#/

Measuring your typing speed and also accuracy is important, as you will have a sense of progress and see your improvements!

Just so you can have an idea, professionals can type at 100 wpm. The average for the population is something between 35 and 44 wpm.

I’m currently somewhere between 55-80 wpm, depending on the complexity of the text at hand, which was fairly easy for the test I did above, since there were no Capitalized Letters, special characters, punctuation, numbers, etc.

2. Find a free course online

I love playing with TypingClub and have been using it for several years now as a warm up before working, both in the past, when I worked as a Technical Leader for Software Consulting (a story I should probably tell on the blog) and today where writing is my main job.

This WebSite has graphics showing your improvement over subsequent repetitions of the exercises and all that jazz, which is pretty cool.

Some tips:

• move your hand as little as possible and keep a consistency for what fingers you use for each key. Thankfully, they have a picture below the keyboard which displays which finger should be used!

Personal preference plays some part once you get advanced. For example: we generally use the [Spacebar] with the right thumb but I am training myself to be able to use both, since that will help me with Piano!

• Use your first fingers for the center, and the fingers at the outer sides for keys such as Enter and Tab. Special care should be paid on the little fingers since they should do most of the typing around the outer part of the Keyboard

I stole an image from wikipedia that shows what your Fingers Distribution should look like more or less. But if you use TypingClub, you can just see the pictures they provide with the exercises.

I found it’s not necessary to use these exact fingers all the time, but that’s a good guideline.

Some inconsistencies on my typing, for example: I tend to use my left index finger to type “6” and my middle right finger to type “U”.

Sometimes I also type some of the keys that are nearby and should be pressed with the same finger (think “S”, “W” or “G”, “F”) with a different one, which  seems to speed up my typing a bit, and is probably a habit picked from Piano. See what works better for you.

These deviations are apparently not such a big deal as regards slowing you down, and some studies¹ show you don’t even need to use all your fingers (although I wouldn’t go as far as using only 2 from each hand, obviously. More about that below).

In the beginning, probably stick with the suggested fingering!

3. Practice the little finger & ring finger

The most common mistake by far is using only your strongest fingers to type. I have given typing lessons to a friend this year and this is what everybody does 😅

So take some time to practice this specifically. You have 8 fingers after all, use all of them!

4. Practice without looking at the keyboard

I have typed this whole article without even thinking about looking at the keyboard. If you’re figuring out how to place your fingers properly, you will have to take a few glances at the keyboard from time to time but, as you get proficient, try typing without looking.

Good practices here:

• type with closed eyes. See your precision. Y typed this whole sentence with my eyes closed. Leaving the typos so you can see my accuracy!
• Close your eyes and try to picture the whole keyboard design. Extremely hard, but useful! At first try to visualize just the center or the outer area and later expand.

Parting Notes

It’s useful to coordinate your hands in a way that allows you to press the shift key with one hand, and then the key that you need to use with the other. When I got the hang of doing this instead of using the same hand, I saw a very visible improvements.

And of course, reiterating, practice until you can type without looking at the keyboard. It’s a little tough, but it will speed you up the writing immensely.

Practice makes perfection!

Practice for 5 minutes every day. It’s an excellent warmup before working on the Computer as it will prime your brain to type faster.

Believe it or not, I have taken merely 15 minutes to type this whole article 😎

Thanks for Reading, my beloved Learner, and I will see you soon! ❤

References

¹https://phys.org/news/2016-02-ten-fingers-fast.html