Type Faster, Dammit – Touch Typing For Beginners

[beatrizw52]

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we spend a lot of time interacting at

our computers

and still so many of us are rubbish

at typing my name is dean

i’m 34 years old and i type testing

like this

i use these six fingers but my index

fingers do 90

of the heavy lifting about two months

ago

i finally started to learn touch typing

touch typing as far as i know the

definition is just typing by touch

so typing using all 10 fingers without

looking down

at the keys you’ll see when i’m working

away like this i’m looking down at the

keyboard most of the time then looking

up to see that everything’s right and

looking back down

that’s a real slow process and also

it’s not good for posture when you’re

working at your desk i’m constantly

hunched over

and getting this like neck down posture

it’s not great the main benefit of this

is that it is much

much faster than well not touch typing

in this video i want to share my process

with you

there’s also an insight into what it

looks like for somebody who’s more

proficient at touch typing already

somebody far better than me

but they want to improve so there’ll be

tips from both of us

on how we are getting to what we want

when it comes to typing

my immediate goal is to get up to 30

words a minute

hopefully within the next two weeks but

my more bigger picture goal

is to try and get 50 words a minute

within the next

month or month or two depending how it

goes

my goal is i would really like to be

able to type at 100 words per minute

with like 99

accuracy and it’s kind of an arbitrary

target i mean 100 is just

you know it’s a hundred but i also

picked it because i know that it’s

possible to get your typing speed beyond

that i know that there are people who

type at 120 150 even 200 words per

minute but that’s a pretty decent goal

you get diminishing returns as with any

skill

it’s much easier to go from zero to 50

words a minute than it is to go from 50

to 100 than it is to go from 100 to 120

even

and so i don’t necessarily want to

invest that much

time and effort into increasing my speed

beyond a certain point

but i think a hundred words for me is a

good goal to hit it does take some

practice and at that point you’re typing

faster than most

people it’s a good efficiency gain

before i get into the step-by-step

process of

what i did as a complete and utter

beginner to touch typing

i’d like to share a very practical tip

which i haven’t done yet and shane will

tell you all about it and involves

a can spray paint and this thing

i learned touch typing it must be like

20 years ago basically so long ago that

i don’t remember exactly when it was it

took me about three maybe four weeks to

go from

typing with two fingers looking at the

keyboard to a sloppy form

of touch typing it wasn’t perfect but i

wasn’t looking at the keyboard anymore

it was way faster than before three or

four weeks is an incredibly fast time to

make that kind of progress

i’ve been at this for two months and i

haven’t really got there yet

so i’ve taken shane’s advice and i went

to go get

this

got what i came for he’ll explain why

now i don’t even know where i got this

idea from but i just

took my keyboard and i spray painted it

black

and so that i couldn’t see the letters

on the keyboard anymore that’s the only

thing i really did

to to make the switch

we are going to go and turn this

into a functional tool all right

[Music]

it’s what the mosque was intended for

are you done dean

i also learned about the basics of where

the fingers are supposed to go on the

keyboard

that’s the main thing i did i simply

forced myself to learn how to type

without looking at the keys by spray

painting my keyboard black and

initially it was very frustrating but i

think

i wouldn’t have made progress as quickly

as i did

if i hadn’t used this hack basically

before you go and do this yourself

just make sure that you’ve learned the

basics because although my progress was

slower than shane’s

i’m glad i did that first and this is

why

the stunt i did with spray painting my

keyboard black i think was really good

to force myself to not look at the

keyboard anymore

but the mistake i made is that i didn’t

insist on perfect finger placement with

my typing

and as a result of that i i learned and

ingrained some of the wrong

moves to make so some letters i would

consistently type with the wrong finger

or some letters i would not consistently

type with the same fingers

so for example t i would sometimes use

my left hand sometimes my right hand

to hit the t key and the problem is that

you can train yourself

into bad habits you can train yourself

into typing in a way that is less

efficient and less fast

and so that is why i kind of had to roll

back and i had to lose quite a lot of my

speed and and

start again to train myself to actually

type correctly so that was the biggest

mistake i made and i should have

and i could have saved a lot of time by

really insisting early on to always hit

the right key with the right finger and

train

the right moves right from the outset

when i first started using 10 fast

fingers

i would usually use my normal method and

i would get up to about 40 keywords per

minute

but the moment i laid my ten fingers

down to do the touch typing thing

i would get a fat zero because i didn’t

know the first thing about it i didn’t

even know where my fingers needed to be

placed

i had this rough idea that a is

somewhere in this region

and m and m is down here and that that’s

about it

i i couldn’t commit to doing this so the

first thing i had to do

was learn the very basics the first step

was touch typing tutor.net

they take you through phases of learning

the first phase is just learning where

your fingers get anchored and that your

f and your j these two

are the ones that you’re gonna need so

they’ll take you through a f f

f space j j j j space

f space j space and those kind of tests

until you get into using the d and the k

as well and and as it unfolds until you

learn the whole keyboard

i spent about an hour at this on my very

first session

and i can tell you one thing it was

really fun it felt like a computer game

like you you’re getting the combos

fighting game it was really entertaining

and an hour went by quickly for the rest

of that week

i easily did an hour every day because

it really was

entertaining and within five days

i had mapped out the keyboard so phase

one was

a walk in the park it was a breeze phase

two

is all about getting faster when you’re

going through the beginner phase

they really drive home the point that

accuracy is more important than speed

and i just want to reiterate this right

now that is true

in the beginning and it is true even

later when you’re proficient

not too long ago i could type at about

75 words per minute

but it wasn’t clean so i was making a

lot of mistakes it felt kind of fast but

it really wasn’t that great what i did

is i started training for

precision so then i slowed me down a lot

but right now i’m back up to

65 sometimes 70 words per minute but

with 95 to 99

accuracy and i’m not making these

mistakes anymore i’m not typing

the wrong way anymore

the last thing you want is to be

reaching for that backspace key

all the time so it was a real real

important thing that when i went back to

10 fast fingers

that i didn’t go for the one minute

speed but that i actually focused on

the accuracy and after my very very

very first attempt i got to a total of

five words in a minute and i was proud

of myself

by the end of that session i think i got

to seven maybe eight words once

and and that was good for day one

slowest smooth

smooth is fast is just one of my

favorite idioms i really like it and it

applies

to any physical skill i would say and

even many other skills

it’s about the fact that when you rush

you’re generally

not actually fast you’re not actually

doing a good job like it feels like

you’re going fast

but you’re not actually fast so that’s

true for pretty much anything you do

and with typing i can tell that that’s

definitely true and you can find that

out for yourself too

if you type as fast as possible you

could be like frantically rushing and

making tons of mistakes so you have to

go back and correct mistakes and so on

so it’s frantic and it feels fast but

it’s not actually fast

and if you slow down and instead type at

whatever speed you can keep up

consistently smoothly

you’ll actually overall be faster and

the goal of course

is to be able to type fast without being

in a frantic rushed state

type fast while being relaxed the third

phase

is daily practice i kept this routine up

of putting at least

10 minutes in every day of going to 10

fast fingers

and doing the test at least 10 15 times

and yes i was getting faster after

another week i was getting up to about

11

sometimes 12 words per minute what was

better than the speed

is that all of a sudden i started

getting automated combos coming out of

me

there was t s and e r and e d

and g h would just happen without me

having to really think about

where they are and i could feel this is

this is definitely

getting somewhere although the

the the flow was getting better the

speed still didn’t improve i never

beat the 15 to 16 word mark and i was

getting frustrated

so part of the process is i added in

another

practice every single day and that was

free writing

i would literally just open up a blank

page and start typing away

things like i am typing without looking

at my keyboard right now and i would

keep going until i had finished

paragraph

punctuation came into it capital letters

came into it

and i could see my progress in real time

where i am right now is still stuck in a

bit of a plateau

i’m reaching 18 to 20 words and i’m not

getting past this and it’s very

frustrating

i think the problem comes in that when i

go and do work

like emails or writing scripts i’m going

back to my old method

and then i’m only doing the touch typing

while i’m practicing

i have to start forcing myself to bring

the touch typing into my everyday

practices

the next phase for me right now is to

black out

my keyboard in about a month i will give

you an update on how the blacked out

keyboard

is working for me

the keyboard you type on definitely

makes a big difference and

i’m not a i’m not a full-blown keyboard

nerd not yet anyway

i got this package which is something

from kickstarter from a while back

serious package with new keyboard

this is my hopes for fast

typing finally

[Music]

it’s a lot of packaging that’s the one

i’ve been using so far

i managed to connect it and this is the

moment of truth

loading up the typing test

that’s actually that actually went

better than i expected

so i was kind of thinking that oh my god

it’s gonna be a disaster you know trying

to get used to a new

keyboard which is true right i made

many mistakes because my fingers are

just like trying to go

where they’re used to on another

keyboard but actually 68 words per

minute

at 94 accuracy that’s actually pretty

damn good for a first

for a first attempt so yeah that’s

that’s promising

this is a rabbit hole that goes super

deep maybe we can there’s a there’s a

linus tech tips video where they test

loads of different key switches

maybe we can link to that as this gives

you an impression of just how deep this

rabbit hole goes

but at any rate the keyboard is

definitely important and

the main thing i would look for is

there’s a lot of stuff to not put up

with with keyboards

if you have squishy keys keys that are

kind of

or just you know wiggle around too much

and keys that just don’t give you

a clear feedback a clear tactile

feedback for

the key press has happened and also if

you have keys that are maybe stuck or

you have to hit them a bit harder for

them to work or sometimes you have to

hit them

twice and stuff like that right old

keyboard stuff

just don’t put up with that at all it’s

costing you so much time

so that’s the first thing i would say i

think a lot of people have old keyboards

they’ve had forever and they’re used

to the the ways in which that keyboard

sucks but you have squeaky keys and

squishy keys and keys that don’t work

properly and all this kind of stuff

throw it out get a new keyboard

personally i like keyboards with a short

travel slim

keyboard and that’s because i’m i’ve

worked on laptops for years and years so

i’m generally used to that kind of

slim flat keyboard but that’s just a

personal preference and what i would

recommend above anything else is to try

different keyboards and see how they

feel

and i have to say like i find keyboard

reviews

pretty unreliable for this kind of thing

and an example is

i’m using this keyboard right now the

logitech ergo something something it’s a

fancy looking you know one of these uh

ergonomic wavy looking keyboards right

it’s just not a great keyboard i have i

don’t think i’ve ever seen a review

a negative review of this keyboard you

know if you look up a review people were

seeing the praises of this keyboard

but it’s just not not a great keyboard

i’m slower typing on this keyboard than

on many others and many cheaper ones too

so if you’ve never even considered this

and right now you know

coveted times you can’t probably can’t

really go to a shop and try out

different keyboards seems like a bad

idea right now so

a good idea would be to try you know

maybe buy three cheap keyboards

that are different just to get a feel of

how the keys are different get a feel of

what you prefer

i think that might be a better move than

to buy one expensive keyboard only to

find out you don’t like that kind of key

switch

so i think that’s what i go with you

have to try different keyboards to

to figure out what you like and also you

can speed test because you will find

that just by switching keyboards some

keyboards will make you slower and some

will make you faster if you’ve watched

the video all the way to the end here

then clearly you have a vested interest

in upping your typing game

i’d be interested to know where you are

right now so

go and do a speed test and send us or

share the results with us

also if you have any other ways of

getting your typing up faster success

stories

share those with us too and let me know

if you’ve tried the blackout

blackout key method and how that went

that’s all from me

i’ll see you in the next video

[Music]

you

[Author]

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