Typing is the conduit by which thoughts flow via the keyboard to the computer. Doing this quickly can massively improve not only your productivity but your flow. Remember when you had a phone that looked like this?
Remember how slow it was? It took ages to write something - 'wic iz y we rote lyk this'.
If you work as a software engineer, you'll be typing all day - whether programming or more predominantly, emails and slack messages.
I found that I was typing reasonably fast (70WPM) but often found myself being unable to keep up with my thoughts as I typed. And I made a LOT of mistakes. The reason? I typed with my index fingers only. I was super quick with it but I knew that I would never be able to write faster unless I retaught myself to write with all 10 digits.
My first scope was to decide what my baseline was - a test that I could use to track my typing speed over the course of this learning experience. For me this was the standard 1 minute typing test on 10fastfingers.
Next, I researched a tool that could re-teach me how to type. I found typingclub to be an incredible tool for this.
The build up
Typingclub starts by building you up what fingers you use. Initially it just focuses on the index finger and builds the muscle memory for what keys it should type. It keeps things simple by having everything lower case and focusing just on the position of your fingers first before typing anything. Once I had reached a stage where I could use 3 fingers I started to apply this in my job. My typing was biblically slow but I was building the muscle memory.
A new keyboard
This has nothing to do with typing speed per se (more on that after), but a new keyboard would affect my typing experience. Previously, I was using a Logitech K380. A fantastic keyboard with multi-bluetooth and plenty of action keys. For £30, it's a steal and I've owned two of them over the years (after the first one met it's unfortunate end with a "e" key being totally broken). But I found the typing experience quite flat. A mechanical keyboard was the obvious answer. But this posed a problem. When I was a teenager, I used to play copious amounts of starcraft 2 - with a mechanical keyboard. Soon, my left forearm swelled with fluid and I eventually had to get carpal tunnel surgery to correct the problem. Wanting to avoid all that pain again (literally), I was a bit hesitant about picking up a new one. Fortunately, mechanical keyboards have come a long way. And one of those new developments is a "low profile" mechanical keyboard. They are a slimmed down version of mechanical keyboards that are less raised so don't strain your hands as much.
After a great deal of searching culminating in an excel spreadsheet comparison, I landed on the Nuphy Air75v2 with Wisteria switches. These switches are most akin to cherry brown switches and have a nice tactile bump on each keystroke. Crucially, they have multi-bluetooth to allow switching between my work and personal machine.
The new keyboard actually reduced my typing speed by a lot. Because I kept accidentally hitting keys or not pressing the correct one entirely. It was worth the persistence though because the keyboard massively improved my enjoyment of typing. The satisfying "thonk" with each keypress echoing like a sturdy industrial-era engine.
More keys
Last up was my pinky finger. I found this difficult to practise because "non-pinky" way of typing was so heavily ingrained. With practise and being conscious about it, I managed it. Although, I'll confess that I'm far from perfect in this regard. I kept grinding on these lessons daily - usually doing 5 a day. They soon moved onto more complex topics such as punctuation, numbers and macros. I'm continuing these lessons now but by around lesson 300 I had a fairly good typing speed.
Once I had grasped using all 10 fingers, I moved on to measuring my progress and practising more common phrases. For this I used, 10fastfingers.com and the top 250 words test. I applied the 80/20 rule in this regard. My thinking was that if I could type the most used 250 words then this would account for 80% of my typing.
Progress
