Hey guys! Welcome to a new post, today I'm going to elucidate on Touch Typing. An important and useful skill. This video will show, what is touch typing, why you should learn it, and more specifically, the best ways to type the fastest.
So, touch typing is where you can type without looking at the keyboard, I know, generally, this would seem impossible. But with practice, this isn't actually that hard. I personally can't tell you the layout of every key on the keyboard, but I know which letter there is when I move a specific finger in a direction. And this is due to the muscle memory you attain while learning touch typing. Where you know a specific place due to the movement of your muscles.
The main reason it's better to learn to type without looking at the keyboard is cause of speed. There barely have been any cases of people who type fast while looking at their keyboard. This is due to actually being able to look at the words with your undivided attention while typing. Causing you to be less distracted. This also can be handy for multi-tasking, as you can do other things while typing, for example, when sometimes I want to type a script while on a zoom meeting, I can easily look at the camera and continue on planning these vids! (Don't do this in your classes please). Nowadays we also spend a more coherent amount of time on our laptops and devices for tasks and more. Our main way of telling our devices what to do is using our keyboard. Showing that the faster we type, the quicker we finish those tasks. Whether it's an email, script, or text, touch typing will save us a lot of time. Which is pretty much our most valuable possession as humans. As a student, I have to write a lot, and these videos are also made with scripts. So typing fast saves a lot of time personally. Touch typing doesn't only improve speed though, it also is found to improve quality in any piece. Cause usually we type much slower than our brains think. So we would not be able to write everything we wanted to take down. While with touch typing we could easily jot countless outlook's in succession, showing more information on the document. This also benefits your cognition. The last and potentially favorite reason to try touch typing is just for the thrill of it and maybe potentially, theoretically showing off. When I started practicing, I didn't do it for the perks, It was just for the fun, but honestly, I really enjoyed touch typing and it actually emerged as a hobby. Plus, getting compliments on fast typing feels really good!
Now how can you learn touch typing? It's pretty simple actually, I find there are 4 phases to learning and improving this skill. 1. Muscle Memorizing the keys, 2. Building accuracy 3. Putting energy and speed into your typing, and like always 4 Keep improving.
Muscle Memorizing
First off, you want to learn how to touch type before building up you're words per minute, but don't expect results to come quick, as learning touch typing and implying it will at first decrease your average words per minute. There are many websites that'll show you how to place your fingers on the home row and learn how to touch type, but my favorite one is TypingClub.com, it's a whole 685 leveled course showing you how to type without looking at your keyboard. This will also show you how to touch-type numbers and special characters too. The reason I recommend typing club is cause it's got a visual to guide you in case you don't know where a key is without looking at your keyboard and some dynamic practice including periods and capitals that you would use when actually typing a proper saying. You also want to treat this like a game, since building muscle memory is the hardest part, but treating this as a game will add some fun to it and also motivate you to get better scores and learning FAST.
Building Accuracy
Building accuracy is where you click the right key in succession, you don't want to make a mistake cause then you'd have to go all the way back and correct it. You could have VERY fast fingers, but without accuracy, you'll never type fast. I've found that usually, my higher scores and typing test include higher accuracy than the lower ones too. I cannot stress this enough, but accuracy is important. A good website to build up your accuracy is typeracer.com since you can't have a single mistake on the site, or else you have to backspace and correct. Causing you not to want to make a mistake in the first place
Adding speed into your typing
So chances are by now that you've improved a lot, you know where to click on your keyboard and can fluently touch type. But you still haven't reached that professional goal you're looking forward to. Well that probably causes of you're speed, what I'd recommend is put a lot of energy, like when you're trying to power through in fitness class. But you should also keep the focus on what you're typing so your accuracy doesn't go haywire. A method I've learned from a friend is at one typing test just NARUTO through the keys and hit as many keystrokes as possible. These 2 types of typing will eventually mix together on you and you'll get used to typing heavily and accurately. Causing you to incrementally reach your goal.
Keep improving
I'd say you're should move on to this stage when you feel like you've done all the steps above and reached around 50-60 WPM. Every skill requires consistent practice, without it you can lose it. Once you're practically satisfied with your typing speed. Just continue practicing by taking a test once a week. Which isn't much time at all, but will still continue to improve you're typing. The most important part to keep improving though is motivation, if you feel too lazy to continue practicing, chances are typing speed will lower. So you wanna keep you motivated, a good way of doing this is staying entertained while typing, although I wouldn't suggest YouTube videos since you also have to see the words, listening to music and podcasts while typing is really enjoyable and will definitely add some fun to the tests. Some websites I'd recommend are type racer and 10fastfingers as they have competitions that will definitely push you to do your best. You just have to keep practicing and keep typing! As always said, practice makes perfect.
Honestly, touch typing is one of my favorite skills, and I'd even call it a hobby. It's enjoyable and useful just like subscribing! Lemme know how fast you can type in the comments! Lastly, I hope this post helped, and I'll see ya next time!