learn to touch type

Ok so it took me 9 months to go from 20 to 30 WPM but I’ve now come to a point where I type faster by touch typing than looking at the keyboard. As a result, I no longer feel like looking down to check what my fingers are doing, which means that I practice every time I use a keyboard, whether it’d be for writing a document, a quick email or producing code. This is good as it means my speed increases all the time without me thinking about it. I can also easily switch from the home desktop to the work laptop that have slightly different keyboards so that’s another positive.

Next target: 40 WPM.

After two months travelling through 12 different countries, each having its own keyboard layout and some using dual-alphabet keyboards, my fingers have got extremely confused and I feel like I’ve gone backwards on this goal. Time to practice again!

Going well: I can now type at roughly 20 words per minute, not looking at the keyboard at all.

Right, so I’ve now learnt the finger positions for all the keys on the keyboard and am typing at approximately 12 words per minute. Even though I still type quicker with my old 4-finger-looking-at-the-keyboard method, I feel much more at ease and my fingers have started naturally finding the keys without me looking so it should just be a matter of practice to get to a decent speed now.

As a software developer, I spend a lot of my time in front of a keyboard and very often I find that I am slowed down in my work by my slow typing. Hence why I am learning to touch type. I found a cool piece of software to help: Ten Thumbs that works on Mac and PC.