How Beginner Touch Typers Can Get Way Faster (120 WPM)

[beatrizw52]

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how to type faster on computer keyboard fast can you type most people type

somewhere between 30 and 40 words per

minute which is not very fast especially

considering how important typing is and

how much of our communication happens

essentially through the keyboard

[Music]

let’s say you currently type at about 40

words per minute a bit above the average

and let’s say you spend two hours per

workday typing it’s probably more but

let’s just lowball this figure that

means that you’re spending about 500

hours a year typing again it’s only on

work days which again it’s kind of an

understatement here so low end you’re

spending 500 hours a year typing

and you’re probably not going to stop

typing anytime soon so over 10 years

that’s basically 5 000 hours spent

typing now if all you do is you invest

some time a few hours spread over a few

weeks

to let’s say double your typing speed to

80 words per minute

over 10 years that means you’re either

saving two and a half thousand hours

of your time

which equates to over a hundred full

days of your time that you get back

or more likely you basically double your

output and whatever it is that you do

whether you write at your job or you do

your own writing your creative work

whatever it is doubling your output will

make you more valuable will make you be

able to produce more value do more and

better work and again there’s basically

no downside all you’re doing is you’re

cutting out time wasting this is why

touch typing is really an essential

productivity skill and it is well worth

investing some time in getting your

typing speed up and increasing our

typing speed is exactly what we have

been doing and will be doing this is why

we’re back both of us

with touch typing the sequel in the

previous video we made on this topic

dean and myself started on our journeys

from different points in trying to

improve our typing speeds

dean was basically starting from scratch

learning how to do touch typing and

myself i had to kind of relearn it

because i had gotten sloppy with my

touch typing my goal was to go from

around 65 words per minute to a target

of a hundred words per minute in the

meantime we’ve each spent some time

practicing and pursuing our respective

typing goals and let’s have a look at

what we learned along the way and what

recommendations for tools and best

practices we can pass on to you if

you’re a complete beginner to this and

you’re starting to learn touch typing

from scratch check out the first video

we did on this topic which includes what

i think is the best life hack to force

yourself to quickly learn this skill

so i had learned the basics of touch

typing but i still couldn’t beat the 20

words a minute mark and after all the

time and effort that i had put in this

was very disheartening to improve i did

what we do best at icario and that was a

personal challenge this time it was

seven days of touch typing

90 minutes a day that seems like it may

be a bit too much but let’s see what

happens

to hopefully get to 30 words per minute

within a week my approach to improving

my touch typing speed was to do it

consistently and in small doses i didn’t

do any like heroic huge practice

sessions but instead i just inserted

around 10 sometimes 15 minutes of typing

practice in my morning routine what i

found is that while i did improve the

faster i get the more i’m plateauing and

the longer it takes to add more speed so

while i started at around 65 words a

minute i am now kind of grinding against

that 90 word a minute limit and i

haven’t managed to reach those 100 words

per minute yet here are a couple of tips

that help me along the way with this

practice that i recommend you try out as

well the first and this i heard from

many many typists who are much faster

than me is to focus on accuracy first

it’s really important that you actually

have great accuracy and you use the

correct finger placements if you rush it

you might just be practicing the wrong

way to type and then you have to unlearn

that which will set you back this is

actually what happened to me originally

and you can learn more about that in the

first video on the topic for my seven

day challenge i used a learning platform

called kieber which we’ll talk about a

little bit later in this video basically

i saw a sharp increase in my skills it

definitely worked i honestly don’t know

how my fingers know what they’re doing

but it’s working that is the best typing

i’ve ever done i finally

flipping cracked it

i am so happy i’m only three minutes in

on day two my hand saw

like he’s up highs and lows i’m at a

stuck point again it’s like repeat

repeat repeat repeat repeat um

44 minutes in

i’m battling it’s like oh

and it’s the same as yesterday

goes up

goes down

can’t concentrate at all god damn this

is grueling 20 minutes left and

everything’s green at the moment i don’t

want to carry on because my score is

good right now now i’m dipping into

tired again it’s like

i was i think this just about mentally

broke me today we are in a new office

let’s do it

after 11 o’clock at night i’ve left it

too late in the day got a call early in

the morning if it wasn’t for that i

think i’d push through my speed is

dropping constantly and my error rate is

going up constantly so i’m i’m pretty

much feel like i’m worse on all fronts

i don’t know what the just happened

quite a bit tears all over my

keyboard um

i was really getting frustrated with

this typing thing

and i put in some music

and i got completely lost in the lyrics

that the typing just started flowing

without mistakes and

no

that’s something just happened

it’s so stupid

i composed myself

i put the song back to the start

and with and then i started typing

it was flawless

like i had like two minutes of just no

mistakes

i had to stop because i couldn’t see my

people

[Laughter]

because i don’t understand what’s

happening

i’m finally finished this has been the

most

grueling challenge i have ever done

90 minutes of touch typing is no joke it

is absolutely

hardcore shane was right that was too

much there were diminishing returns at

some point

it was a crazy journey and it’s a story

for another time

um but it definitely

definitely pushed me

beyond

my original goal of 30 words per minute

i got actually considerably higher in

the first few days even up to 47 words

per minute so

it was hectic the problem with the

platform for this challenge is that what

happens is you learn one letter at a

time and in the seven days although i

made massive progress

i didn’t get through the whole alphabet

so when i went to real world

applications it didn’t kind of work out

it didn’t help my overall touch typing

ability except that the letters that i

did do i got really good at after this

challenge concluded i obviously still

wanted to get through to the end of the

alphabet so i continued with a daily

practice but i reduced it from 90

minutes to 20 minutes

slow and steady while we’re on slow and

steady let’s go over to tip number two i

love the saying slow is smooth smooth is

fast and i think it applies to many

things in life touch typing being one of

them although having said that tip

number two is about getting through

plateaus when you notice that you’re

plateauing you’re just not getting

faster even though you’re practicing i

recommend that you switch up the pace

i would do practice sessions where i

deliberately slow down and i try to go

even slower and try to hit 100 accuracy

but then i would also do practice

sessions where i’m pushing speed where i

make more errors than usual but i’m just

trying to get my fingers used to moving

faster this works really well i use this

method which i called the goal switching

method countless times throughout my

touch typing journey

in the beginning it came in really handy

when i got stuck on certain letters

notably the letter p i spent forever

trying to get the p stage passed

it’s because i’ve got a bit of a funny

pinky and i had to learn like a

workaround to to hit that p changing up

the way that i approached that way

sometimes i would just go for the the

speed and other times slowly but kind of

learn the movement that i would need to

do to make sure that i was accurate

every time eventually it just fell into

place from going between these and the

combination of those two things almost

like to shake loose from a plateau that

can help me then make a little more

progress when i return to a speed that

feels more normal again and tip number

three perhaps the most important of all

do your touch typing in real life

it is not very useful if you do your 10

minutes or 30 minutes or however much

practice

of touch typing in a touch typing app

and then you switch to email or slack or

whatever else that you’re doing and you

start you know two finger typing again

you start looking at the keyboard again

this is where i went wrong every time i

did try and apply touch typing in

everyday practices i would get so

frustrated because i just i couldn’t get

it right in the beginning this can be

difficult but force yourself to do touch

typing

in real life with the typing you do for

work

and for private communication and

wherever else you use typing like i said

it can be frustrating it can feel slow

at the beginning but you’ll actually get

in much much more practice doing real

typing than just sitting in some of

these typing tools for a few minutes a

day the conclusion to all this for me is

that this experiment is well worth it

even though of course i’m slightly

disappointed that i haven’t reached my

100 word per minute target yet

and i have to say i thought i would get

there sooner but i guess i

underestimated the challenge a little

bit having said that my typing has

gotten faster and the target is

arbitrary i mean ultimately every little

bit that your normal typing gets faster

saves you time makes you more efficient

and makes you more productive so it is

well worth doing even if it takes a bit

longer to get to where you wanted to go

and longer it did take for me

my hours were higher than the average

according to kieber it takes the average

person between 5 to 10 hours to go from

20 to 40 words per minute it took me

35 hours so basically i took longer than

most people but the good thing about

that is that if i can do it you can

definitely do this so where to from here

obviously i’m going to push my goals up

higher to get faster but more

importantly what can i do differently to

make this process better and faster the

answer that i was looking for is that i

need to use more tools a variety of

tools for different things

and for that let’s go back over to shane

who’s got the breakdown maybe you’re

wondering what is the best tool to use

to learn torch typing and after having

spent many hours testing and using

countless online touch typing tools i

can tell you that the answer is there is

no single best tool but i think there is

the best combination of tools to use

let’s start with the first one which is

typing club typing club is a great place

to start if you’re starting completely

from scratch this free online tool will

teach you the very basics of touch

typing and then build that up over

countless lessons but even if you

already have some proficiency at touch

typing you can take a test and then it

will insert you in the part of the

course that matches your level so

basically no matter where you are with

your touch typing skill this is a good

basic tool now the advantage of typing

club is that it teaches you real typing

including punctuation capitalization

symbols numbers and so on

for just testing your raw typing speed

this is not ideal but for actually

improving your real world touch typing

this is a great tool to use

next i recommend that you check out

keeber which is key e y b r dot com

keeper is a pretty specialized tool

which is there to teach you specific

finger combinations and basically what

this tool does is it tests your

weaknesses it basically looks for

specific keys and key combinations where

you are slower than on others or where

you make more errors and it will then

have you practice those over and over

again so you can polish out your

weaknesses keyboard is a challenging

tool to use and i think it’s really good

for finding those weaknesses and

polishing them out for that kind of

precise intervention however i wouldn’t

recommend that you only practice using

this tool because well several reasons

first of all you’re never typing real

words it’s always throwing just like

these made up words and key combinations

at you and so to some degree this just

doesn’t translate into real typing as a

keeber veteran i’ve been doing this

longer than shane i can say that they do

actually have real word options the

longer that you do it the more the words

become real you can also make some

adjustments you can add capitalization

and you can add punctuation

so it does have this built into it

but there is one big problem and that

was the problem that prevented me from

getting better in the real world and

it’s this when it comes to making

mistakes keyboard when you mistype will

just keep the cursor on that letter that

you mistyped and when you backspace or

delete nothing happens and it just

continues once you then type the right

character and in this way it just

behaves nothing like real typing in real

typing you have to delete the letter or

delete the word and start from scratch

when you make a mistake

and that’s also something you need to

practice obviously ultimately we want to

make as few mistakes as possible but one

part of touch typing is to proficiently

correct your mistakes and with kieber

you never practice that this is

absolutely the reason why i couldn’t

apply touch typing in the real world

every time that i did make a mistake it

would completely stump me and prevent me

from kind of moving on

and it would throw me off to the point

that i would just

feel like i want to return to the the

normal my old way of typing just to get

the job done it wasn’t slowing me down

it was completely inhibiting me from

from making progress despite all the

incredible results and the stats on the

platform of me getting like 40 and 50

words per minute with 100 accuracy it

didn’t mean anything in the real world

if i couldn’t

live with the mistakes that i was making

next monkey type monkey type is a tool i

recommended the one that has become my

go-to the one that i use the most the

strength of monkey type is really the

user experience and i don’t mean that

just in the sense of it’s a nice looking

app it kind of feels good to use

although that’s also true

the important thing is that in some

subtle ways it is just better at

teaching you touch typing than other

tools what monkey type does really well

is give you the prompts the words that

you need to type and place your cursor

as you type among them and when you make

errors it manages to simulate real

typing so you have to correct your

errors as you would with real typing

while still combining that with the

prompted words now if you haven’t

practiced touch typing then that

probably doesn’t mean much to you but if

you compare this to many other touch

typing practice tools you’ll quickly see

what i mean monkey type just does a

better job of giving you these word

prompts and simulating real typing and

real error correction and doing it all

in a user interface that just

works another strength of monkey type is

that it’s highly customizable you can

customize the length of your typing

session so you can practice like short

bursts speed typing or you can do longer

typing sessions so it’s great for doing

your daily practice sessions you can do

a two-minute run or even a custom length

run so you can do a 10-minute run if you

want you can also customize the source

words that it uses and you can choose

whether it includes something like

punctuation or just lower cap words

overall this is just a really

well-rounded tool that will help you do

your daily practice and customize it to

your needs and finally two more

recommendations 10 fast fingers and type

racer both of these typing tools are

great if you have a competitive streak

because both of these have an emphasis

on competing against other typists on

leaderboards or in the case of type

racer you’re literally competing against

other typists in real time so if you

have a competitive streak if you know

that that’s something that motivates you

then these tools are great to keep you

going and keep you engaged i use 10 fast

fingers to track my real progress to see

how i’m changing over time with a very

similar setup or a similar lesson as

opposed to being in platform where

you’re making progress on different

lessons but you don’t see the

application of it in the real world i’m

very proud to say that in qbr i’ve hit

the 60 word per minute mark but more

importantly in 10 fast fingers i can see

that i’m on average getting between 40

and 45 words per minute which is a

reliable statistic

and i really look forward to pushing the

bar now with the new tools that i have

available to me to try new things and

get my average

into the 60s range

and then after that

shane i’m coming for your score

i’m not gonna rest until i do

all of these tools are free to use and i

think you’ll get the best out of them

and the best practice if you use a

combination of all of them that’s it

from us in this video

you’re gonna see the third installment

of this touch typing series only when

either shane gets to a hundred words per

minute or i get to around 70 on average

that’s the next goal that we’ve set

before the next episode will be worth it

and of course only if there are new and

valuable lessons to share with you that

made that progress meaningful if you do

have any questions though that we

haven’t answered in one of our two

videos then obviously let us know in the

comments below and also

i’m probably gonna make another short

video which is gonna just be for fun

about the grueling events that happened

during my seven day progress my seven

day challenge that were just

nuts

it was crazy

but that’s it and we’ll see you soon

[Author]

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