Touch typing is my most-valued auxiliary skill. It impacts everything I do for a living, from design, development to writing email. But it took me thirteen years to accurately type 100 words per minute on a QWERTY keyboard because I trained incorrectly.
I could have saved thousands of hours spent typing essays if I had started training with the right tools before varsity. And with the proper training, you can reach those speeds in months instead of years.
A path to better typing
- Focus on accuracy before speed, or you will just type badly, quickly. Only work on speed once you reach 95%+ accuracy.
- Use the correct fingers and always return to the home row, even if it's slower at first. Guitar practice won't hurt.
- Remap Caps Lock to Backspace. This can increase your speed by 10% overnight just by maintaining your home row position.
- Pro tip: To unlearn the old Backspace key, remap Backspace to Spacebar. Every time you press the old key, you will be forced to press the new Backspace key twice.
- Practise your slowest letters with a typing tutor. Those incremental changes add up.
Typing Tools
- Type Faster - to train.
- SharpKeys - for remapping keys.
- Typer Shark - a fun way to practise with a limited character space (a-z).
- Keymapper - to quickly remap Caps Lock to Backspace on other people’s PCs.