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beatrizw52
GuestJuly 28, 2022 at 10:19 pmPost count: 2511how 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
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AuthorPosts
How Beginner Touch Typers Can Get Way Faster (120 WPM)2022-07-28T22:19:30+00:00
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