For most people, typing’s a breeze.
You might have taken typing classes in school or just learned as you went, and you can keep writing or coding or gaming with little problem or mistake. But even if you’re around your computer all the time, you still may not know how to use touch typing.
This is nothing short of a travesty (okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration). Touch typing is one of the easiest ways to improve your typing efficiency and productivity.
What Is Touch Typing?
Touch typing is knowing how to type without relying on your sense of sight.
While that’s easy to understand, in practice there are thousands (if not millions) of people who still rely on sight to work on their computers. If you’ve ever seen a young child pushing one key at a time with only one or two fingers, you’ve experienced someone who hasn’t yet learned the skill of touch typing (if you’ve seen otherwise, you found a super-genius baby).
Now you may be thinking, “I don’t need this. I know my way around a keyboard when I’m gaming.” But think about when you’re not doing something you enjoy or are comfortable with — do you still type as quickly as you do in familiar settings?
If not, you could learn the touch typing method to help improve your productivity.
How Does it Help Me?
There are a few different reasons why learning touch typing will help you out.
For starters, when you learn to type without looking at the keys, you train your brain to memorize the key locations. This means you’re not distracted by continually having to glance down at your hands to make sure you’re pressing the right keys.
What that translates to is that the better you know touch typing, the less distractions you’ll have overall. You’ll be able to pay more attention to what you really need to focus on, whether that be your gaming or that 3-page paper your teacher assigned you last week.
Second, touch typing improves your speed. For example, the editor-in-chief of Productive! Magazine, Michael Sliwinski, found that when he stopped looking at the keys, he increased his typing speed by 300%. Check out the video of him explaining this transformation:
Das Keyboard’s very own Daniel Guermeur actually started this company because he wanted to improve his typing speed and accuracy by using keyboards with blank keys.
So if you consider the fact that the average speed of computer typists is only 40 WPM, you can imagine how easy it is to go beyond that average if you keep at it. Need some ideas for practicing your typing? You can always Google “typing games,” or check out some of the links we prefer.
So What Will You Do About Touch Typing?
Now that you know how this method of typing can help you have better gaming, typing, and overall computer experiences, it’s time to go teach yourself.
Set some goals that you’d like to reach, whether it’s improving your speed or looking less often at the keys. Once you reach those goals, set new ones, and keep improving!
How has touch typing affected your computer or gaming experiences?