Ollie Green · November 9, 2018 · 5 min read In this day and age, typing has become a large part of everybody’s work and school life. You can make yourself more productive by learning how to improve your typing speed.
Ultimately, your typing speed will improve over time as you type more often. However, if you’d like to speed up the learning process, there are many tips you can use. Let’s take a look at some of the best.
Start By Learning Touch Typing
This is by far the most important step you can take to improve your typing speed. Touch typing is the ability to type without looking at your keyboard. Touch typists know their way around their keyboard so well that they don’t even have to look.
This is beneficial for your typing speed because your fingers will already know exactly where to go as you continue to type. It’s less about not looking and more about building a fast, fluid typing speed because you know your keyboard like the back of your hand.
So, how do you go about learning how to touch type? It’s all about practice and building a familiarity with your keyboard. To build this familiarity, you can play typing games from websites like Typing Club. Websites like Typing Club will give you fun exercises to help you learn the position of each key.
With these games, you are taken through practical lessons that help you to build a stronger familiarity with your keyboard.
Type First, Correct Mistakes Later
One of the biggest obstacles to fast typing is typing accuracy. When some people try to type fast, they end up missing keys or pressing the wrong keys by accident. People sometimes end up in this fumble between the backspace keys and the keys they are trying to press.
To solve this, one optional tip is to type out everything first and don’t even use your backspace key. Afterward, you can go back and read through to correct any mistakes you have made.
This tip is great for two reasons. First, each time you stop to use the backspace key or correct a mistake, you are stopping your typing – it breaks the flow. Secondly, by not using the backspace key, you are forced to carefully read through your writing afterward.
It can be tempting to just publish your work as is without proof reading, but this tip forces you to read through because chances are you’ve made at least one or two mistakes.
It’s not always about typing at a lightning fast speed. Instead, focus on the flow of your writing. Building a steady, consistent flow is the key to being able to write consistently for a long time.
Play the Right Kind of Music
Once you get really good at typing, there will be one major bottleneck in your typing speed – your ability to think. If you practice enough, it will get to the point where you cannot think fast enough – your hands will type faster than you can think about what to type in the first place.
I’ve personally found that one of the best ways to improve my thinking ability whilst typing is to choose the right kind of music.
Music that has a lot of words may distract you from being able to process your own thoughts clearly. Many people prefer to listen to music that’s calming and not too complex. Such genres include classical music, Lo-Fi, jazz, or even movie soundtracks.
Obviously, everybody is different and this is just more of a general consensus. You should try to type with different music genres and see how your typing ability changes.
You may even strangely find that something against the norm like a fast flowing rap song may help you process your thinking it may help you type faster.
Alternatively, you may find that music doesn’t help at all. In this case, a good white noise app could be an excellent solution. Or, even just a background track from YouTube for ambient noise like a river or a thunderstorm. Many people have reported that they personally find white noise and ambient noise to be the best way to help them concentrate.
Experiment with different sounds and music until you find what works best for you.
Purchase a More Suitable Keyboard
The first thing many people would suggest is for you to go out and purchase a fancy mechanical keyboard. It’s well known that mechanical keys have fast response times – you really feel when each key is pressed, meaning you can move onto the next key faster.
I do agree that a mechanical keyboard can help, but this should be something you should consider once you’ve mastered the basics of touch typing. I would argue that familiarity with your own keyboard outweighs the benefits of a hardware change. I would recommend sticking to one keyboard first so that you can familiarize yourself with its layout before moving onto something else.
Once you feel confident enough, you can consider moving to a new mechanical keyboard. Just remember that it may take some time to get used to, so in the initial few days or weeks you may even have a slower typing speed than normal.
Conclusion
So that wraps up our look on some quick tips for how to improve your typing speed. I hope that the information I’ve provided is useful to you. As a final passing note, just remember that like with everything else, improving your typing speed will take time and practice.
Do you have any questions about typing? I’ve been writing online professionally since 2011 so if you have any other questions, write a comment below and I’ll be happy to help.
