In recent years, I noticed that younger people are not trying to improve their typing speed on the keyboard. But the truth is physical keyboards are still a much faster option than using a touch keyboard on a phone or tablet. But before you start learning how to type faster you must have the motivation to do so.
Typing faster isn’t just a skill to show off or to feel good about. It’s a skill that will allow you to save a lot of time and headaches as well. After learning how to type faster your mind will do it effortlessly from muscle memory which will allow you to focus more on the content you’re writing. It can also be an advantage when applying to certain jobs. And my favorite advantage is that it will relieve some of the stress when filling out a long-form. Now that we talked about some of the advantages let me tell you how I got my typing speed from 30 words-per-minute to about 80 words-per-minute in about three months
1 – Use 10 fingers
This is the most crucial advice in this whole blog. Typing with ten fingers means getting 10x faster than just using one finger if used right. 10 finger typing will allow you to just never look at the keyboard ever again unless you broke something and your system crashes.
In order to learn how to use 10 fingers typing, you will need to know where to place each finger on the keyboard and assign certain keys to each finger as shown in this image:
In order to improve your 10 fingers typing, I would recommend using www.typing.com. This website has different parts where you’ll learn which keys should be assigned to which finger. Using this website I picked it up in no time and moved on from using just two fingers and constantly looking at the screen.
2 – Don’t look at the keyboard
While it might be important to look at the keyboard when typing with only two fingers, in 10 fingers typing world it’s a big no-no. The reason why you would type with ten fingers is to get faster, and looking at the keyboard is certainly going to slow you down. Especially at the learning stage.
An alternative to looking at the keyboard is to just type and make mistakes then correct them. That way your muscle memory will get better and better over time. It’s okay to make mistakes, but just don’t look at the keyboard.
3 – Start slow and focus on accuracy
In order to get faster at typing, believe it or not, you need to start slower. Possibly, even slower than you were when you were using one or two fingers. The reason is that you’re now using fingers you haven’t used before with the keyboard which will feel weird in the first couple of months probably. Also, you’re trying to get your muscle memory which takes time and practice.
That is why focusing on accuracy over the speed at the beginning is much more important. Accuracy is the foundation of the typing process, if you make many mistakes it won’t matter how fast you are because you’ll spend half the time correcting your mistakes. It’s okay to make mistakes in the beginning (and you will) but slowing down and focusing on accuracy will minimize your mistakes in the future when you’re faster a lot.
4 – Practice every day
This is probably the most obvious advice, this advice goes to any skill in life whether it’s typing speed or bottle flipping. For typing though, it doesn’t have to be an hour a day or take a big part of your day. You just need 10-15 minutes a day whenever you feel comfortable and you’re good to go. Another tip is to keep track of your practice and typing speed by taking screenshots or noting them down because it’s easy to forget where you started and where you’re right now which might demotivate you.
If you are wondering how can I practice typing? well, there are many different ways in which you can practice typing. One way is to type whatever is in your mind or writing essays. If that seems boring to you, then maybe you can pick a book and copy what’s written (without looking at the keyboard of course). And my favorite way is by using typing speed practices/test websites.
There’s many different typing speed test/practice websites that you can find. But here are the ones that I have used:
- livechat.com/typing-speed-test (best design)
- typing-speed-test.aoeu.eu (easiest one)
- typingtest.com (personal favorite)
5 – Play typing games
If you don’t like typing tests or just don’t feel intrigued by it, then maybe games will do it. Sometimes the competitiveness of a game pushes you to your limits. However, I would advise you to only do this after you’ve nailed the basics and your accuracy is on point, otherwise the rush and joy of the game will push you to abandon your accuracy.
The best thing that I got from the games in my opinion is probably typing under pressure. Any task you do is usually harder when you’re under pressure. Getting used to perform under pressure will improve your typing speed hugely in my opinion. You can find many typing games online but here are a few:
These are the tips that I got and used in order to improve my typing speed from 30 – 40 wpm to 80 – 90 wpm in a short period. I am still practicing and trying to improve and this blog is certainly helping me as well. Good luck with your typing journey.
