Learn to Touch Type - It's Not too Late
Tags: productivity
Published: 2020-11-19 18:18:53


Growing up in India and completing my Engineering in the late 2000s I haven't seen the emphasis on the Touch Typing back home even when most of the Engineers land Software Jobs. I hope things must have changed now though. Being in my early 30s now, this article is about how I started learning Touch Typing and how it has helped me with my Productivity as a Software Engineer.

## Where to Learn
- https://www.typingclub.com/login.html - Yes I paid and still paying until I reach Fluent 75
- https://www.typingtest.com/ - Though the above site gives great insight and Analytics. You get too used to the platform and I felt I'm fast only with the above site and its interface and falling behind in the other sites. So this is a great place to do the Litmus testing.
- http://learntyping.org/ - If you don't want to pay this is a great site used by millions of people.

## What Keyboards to use
Go Mechanical. The Chicklet style of Laptop keyboards will become very friendly when you are comfortable with Mechanical. You won't get the depth and finger navigation accuracy with Laptop Keyboards if that's your first choice in learning. Also, I personally feel the clicking sound "Tak Tak Tak" gives the high, but mechanical keyboards are not a great choice in an office space as it might annoy others. But Go Mechanical when you learn.

## My investments
After lot of research, I bought this
![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/56k7uthpx4jtn4vdi16z.png)
but actually, I want to buy this
![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/r5e2a8ku6xp7c8ompef4.png)
but it's quite a reach for a beginner.

Never underestimate the power of the wrist pad when it comes to Touch Typing. You don't want to develop tennis elbow.
![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/gou8ow1t1g6fybcth6ej.png)

## How Long and How Fast:
There are 84 keys in the keyboard I bought and a few more combinations. Our fingers are very familiar with Space, Enter, and Del keys. So you just need to become fluent with 81 keys, that's the way I saw it.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/i8oa2c4or64ek562l2ys.png)

Right now I stand at ~50-60 wpm after logging ~40 hrs of training spanning over a period of 1 year. That might sound like a lengthy span. But honestly, I gave up and went dormant for ~7-8 months and took it up again. The goal is 75 and I will happily settle there. While there are developers who can easily touch 120s and 140s. 75 is more than enough according to me, with more practice I can bump it even more but again 75 is enough.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/0hdx1ngwtmpj9js7zij9.png)

Since I touch new speeds now and was dormant for over 3 quarters I'm able to compare how bad I was and where I have come in with respect to speed.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/egfxjir229orh4bmo1is.png)

This is the in-depth analysis of my touching style and this is where I stand.
![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/p1s4gpqx5k7565w3vhu1.png)
![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/w0u1uks4pwheev8ov721.png)


## Reflection 

As a Software Engineer, this has worked out for me well. Following are the benefits I saw,
- I can blog pretty quickly now
- I can write Tech Docs in much lesser time and with less stress
- An Udemy course which is ~ 4hrs with code along materials takes me ~ 5-6 hrs to complete as I can quickly type it out and previously it took maybe 7-9 hrs. 
- Things are less intimidating as the effort of typing has become effortless and the fingers know what they are doing and we can totally focus just on the monitor.

## Shortcut
There are lots of keyboard shortcuts that will cut down your need for a mouse. I haven't reached there yet, but right now Option + Backspace deletes the whole word because what I have noticed is once you mistype a complex word, we often use Backspace, Backspace, Backspace instead of Option + Backspace deletes the whole word. It comes in very handy for a beginner believe me.

15 - 30 mins a day is more than enough. Do not give up, you will get there. It's all about consistency.

## Warning

Until you reach 30+ hours or real good logging do not invite others like "Hey, See How Fast I can Type !!", that's the time you will be the worst typist ( happened to me a bunch of times ), also don't think that you are touch typing and feel good about yourself when you are actually typing it messes with your head and makes you produce bad results.