I know people who type way faster than me. When people see my fingers hop all around the keyboard, especially if they aren't typists themselves, they think I'm faking it and not really typing anything for real. It usually happens when I am practicing, as that's when I often reach my top speeds.
Somehow, it brings some resurfacing of the feeling of fulfilment when such happens, because no one could have said the same about me exactly two years ago, when I started to learn. And to think that I am now able to efficiently type without looking at the keyboard, or even blindfolded, means that I have actually accomplished a goal that I once set.
Sometime around May or June 2022, I was inspired to learn how to type with all my fingers without looking at the keyboard and eventually be fast like a few of my friends. Getting started and growing was, however, a mighty mountain to climb. It was like learning to play the guitar, mastering new finger placements, and developing coordination.
I didn't know how to start, and so it was a bit rough. Thankfully, I found somewhere to get started, and so I stuck with it for a long time. Long story short, here I am now with an all-time high of 87 words per minute, all the way from 10 WPM when I started. There is definitely some growth there, and it feels good. However, I'm not exactly satisfied, but not for reasons you may have already thought of by now.
I should state, though, that touch typing has allowed me to use my PC a whole lot more than I used to without it. And that has unlocked a higher level of productivity for me in ways that I shared here. I can be more efficient, for example.
Now that I have been able to reach 87 words per minute, how is it that I say that I am not satisfied? I am already way faster than the average typist.
Well, here is my issue...
I can only reach top speeds when I only dance around the keys that I am familiar with. The alphabets, lowercase and uppercase, a few puntuation marks and symbols, and perhaps a few shortcuts. That's pretty much it. When it comes to numbers, typing them is sometimes a problem, and it slows me down, as well as some special characters.
Pausing for a second to be sure where the special characters are, for example, affects how fluid I can be when typing. In a way, I kind of understand how that could have come to be.
You see, some of the webpages I use to practice with only give me lowercase letters to type. So, at the end of the day, I spend more time practicing something that I already have some reasonable level of mastery on and less on what I'm not fluent in.
The only webpage I know that allows me to learn effectively is typingtest.com. So that's what I try to use more of now.
While my all-time high may be 87 WPM now, I actually do not type that fast for regular things most of the time. Making a post, for example, often requires time to think, process thoughts, and keep the paragraphs coherent. Albeit, I am fast, and that's all that matters.
Let's see how it all goes down in a few weeks, or perhaps even days. I hope to get better with special characters and numbers.
Images imagined with Meta AI
