Learning to Type

I only learned how to touch type (typing without looking at the keyboard) when I was in high school.  I used to type at a decent speed (~40 words per minute), but it was only after I learned how to touch type that I could raise that up to 80 words per minute.

If you have to do a lot of typing, such as writing reports for school, programming, or even casually blogging, typing quickly is extremely valuable.  The faster you can get your ideas down, the more time you have to do other things.  It is really annoying when you have so many good ideas, but you took so long typing that you forgot what you were going to write.

I first learned to type when I was in 10th grade.  I took AP World History, which had a lot of homework that involved reading the book and taking notes on it.  Usually, it ended up as a 1 - 2 page note-sheet.  Of course, I could read and process much faster than I could type, so my typing speed was definitely the bottleneck for my homework completion rate.

I decided that I would learn how to type faster.  This is the part where most people stop trying to learn, because your typing speed drops dramatically in the first few weeks.  Right when I decided to switch over from random typing to touch typing, I probably had only 15 - 20 word per minute.  Yes, that's very slow!  I had to constantly remind myself to keep on typing correctly, because once I stop thinking about touch typing, I would automatically revert to looking down at the keyboard and typing with random fingers again.  Since I typed so slowly at first, it took much longer to do my homework.

However, I could see improvement after a while.  My speed began picking up.  After a few days, I could type without looking at the keyboard, but I still had to sometimes stop and think about where certain keys were.  After a week or two, I could type just as fast as I used to be able to.  After around a month, it became habit.  I could touch type without a problem.  My typing speed doubled!

If you don't know how to touch type, then I think you really should.  It really helps a lot, especially after I learned how to program.  If you're extra-awesome, maybe you want to learn how to type with a Dvorak Keyboard, which has better key layouts for faster typing with fewer errors because it requires less finger movement by placing the important keys in the middle row.