How I improved my typing speed!

Why I wanted to increase my typing speed:

There are a couple of reasons I guess. Firstly, my thoughts were that being able to type faster could only aid my productivity. If I could type more words per minute, this would result in getting my day job work completed quicker, meaning I could get through more. Additionally, everything is online these days, being able to type quicker is only going to make life that little bit more efficient and easier. Oh, and did I mention, typing super quickly looks cool?!

How I went about learning to type faster: Primarily, I used a website called https://10fastfingers.com/typing-test/english. This website makes it really simple to track your typing speed progress. It allows you to do a typing test (see how in my YouTube video) and it generates a Words Per Minute (wpm) score. There are a couple of other websites I dipped in and out of during my 'training' but as long as you are learning the basic techniques, which I will outline come of soon, you just need to test yourself regularly and 10fastfingers is a great way to do that.

My initial score and final score:

Did I mention that I set out to improve my typing speed in 7 days? A little self improvement type challenge was my thinking. I took my initial WPM score on day 1, which came out as 75wpm. According to the internet, this is actually already a very decent score and puts me into the category of 'professional typist'. Maybe I am not too slow as I have grown up online, have been to University (countless essays that had to be typed) but also as my 9-5 job involves constantly computer use and countless typing of documents. Anyway, you can always improve and this is what I set out to do.

Over the 7 days, I specifically practiced my typing speed for around 20 minutes in the evenings (outside of work) and was sure to watch footage back to pick up on any bad habits slowing me down. I also searched the web for tips on how to type faster. At the end of the 7 days, I did another test on 10fastfingers and got 95wpm! This was a brilliant improvement of over 25%.

What I learnt: (check out my YouTube video for more of comprehensive outline and a deeper dive)

1. Before trying to speed up - slow down! - Slow down and work on accuracy and finger/keyboard placement. Check out my video to find out what the 'Home Row' position is and how this will help you.

2. Posture - Get your posture right! - For the sake of your body but also this will help typing speed.

3. Scan ahead. Get used to scanning ahead of words coming up. This helps to destroy the lag between thinking of what you want to type and actually communicating to your finger muscles to move.

It seems to honestly be down to learning the typing techniques and praciticing them in order to build muscle memory.

Conclusion: I have definitely gained from doing this and have improved by a good amount considering I was only practicing for 20 minutes per day. I will will carry what I have learnt forward to improve even more. I think you should try to improve your speed too!! Can't hurt to be more productive!

Thank you for reading,

Hayley