Learn Touch Typing and Become More Productive

Do you write a lot on computer keyboards? If you do, are you using the touch typing method consistently? If you are a blogger, writer, coder or someone who types a lot, then I urge you to learn touch typing now! In this article, I will first explain why you should take some time to learn touch typing, and then I will direct you to a great website that shows you exactly how to learn it.

What is the Touch Typing Method?

Touch typing or the touch method is a way of typing without looking at the keyboard. Someone who is using the touch method has their fingers placed in one main position on the keyboard and knows where the rest of the keys are by muscle memory.

The fingers on the left hand are placed on these keys: [A] [S] [D] [F] while the right-hand fingers are placed on these keys: [J] [K] [L] [;], like in the picture below. The typist knows where all the other keys are from that initial position.

Why learn the touch method

1. Increases your typing speed and saves you tons of time

Typing quickly and efficiently on a keyboard is a skill that far too many people ignore. The average accepted typing speed is 40 words per minute. With the touch method under your belt, you can comfortably achieve a typing speed above 100 words per minute and double your productivity. Touch typing is a skill that doesn't take that much effort to learn. In return, it can have an immense effect on your productivity output. I would highly recommend that you take advantage of this technique.

When you're trying to learn this skill, your typing speed will drop drastically during the beginning of the learning process. This can feel like a waste of time. It's easy to give up and go back to your current default typing speed and trick yourself to believe that you are content with that. I think this is why a lot of people choose to not learn this technique - because it feels like it is slowing down their typing speed rather than speeding it up.

But you have to keep this in mind: an important concept in being productive is to take some time early in a process to invest in something that will save you time long term.

I observe so many people typing with only one or two fingers in each hand and looking far too often between the screen and the keyboard. And these are people who have keyboard-typing as one of their main activities in their job! The keyboard is designed to make touch typing possible, so why not take advantage of this? With a little bit of effort for a few weeks, you can make the rest of your career a lot more productive.

2. Removes the barrier between thoughts and written words

If you have read some of my posts about concentration and have developed a mind that thinks and works quickly, it won't do you any justice when it comes to typing unless you can type quickly and effortlessly. The barrier of having to type will slow you down. If you can type quickly, you don't even have to look at the screen to ensure that the correct letters are being typed. Your thoughts can flow freely while your fingers effortlessly record your thoughts onto the screen. There will be a free flow between the input of thoughts entering your mind and the output of words to the screen.

3. It's a lot less tiring for your eyes

When you're not familiar with the keyboard, your eyes move around like crazy between the keyboard and your computer screen. This can have an impact on your energy level and can quickly make you fatigued. When using the touch method, you won't have this problem. You are likely to experience that you can carry on working for longer since you won't be tired so quickly.

How to learn the touch method

Learning touch typing really doesn't have to be a big struggle. Here is a crucial piece of advice: ake your time with it, and view it as something that you're just "doing" instead of something that you have to achieve straight away.

What touch typing is all about is to develop an unconscious muscle memory of where each letter is on the keyboard. This way, you don't have to think about it consciously. Developing muscle memory takes time. If you have a goal of becoming a fast typist quickly, you can easily become agitated when you don't see results straight away. So instead of striving too much to achieve it quickly, just think about touch typing as something you just 'do' and let the fact that you're getting better be a by-product of 'doing' it. If you can manage to have this mindset, you will learn it effortlessly. But you still have to make sure that you do it regularly.

Alright, let's get started.

Place your fingers on the ASDF JKL; keys like this:

This is your 'home' position where your fingers will be sitting for most of the time. With the fingers in the 'home' position, wiggle your index fingers around a little bit. Can you feel something? Those two dots on the F and J keys are there to help you to find the 'home' position without having to look at the keyboard.

From this position, each finger has their own set of keys to take care of. You can easily see how your fingers and the keys relate to each other in the picture below.

1. Learn the basics

The best way to avoid becoming overwhelmed and giving up is to start using the touch method on just a few letters at a time. Then you can slowly build from there. First, learn the finger placements of the ASDF JKL; keys, then get a little bit of practise finding the other keys from the 'home' position. I'm not going to explain this very much. Instead, I am going to direct you to a website where you can learn the basics of touch typing really well: https://www.typingclub.com/

Typing Club is an interactive website that will guide you through the basics of touch typing very quickly, and it is fun to use! I highly recommend it. However, I will urge you to not spend too much time on this website. You won't need to learn about more than the home row, top row and bottom row before you can move on to point number 2 that I have explained below.

2. Practise the touch method on real work

Once you have got a little bit of practise with the basics and are comfortable finding every letter on the top and bottom row from the 'home' position without looking at the keyboard, start practising and developing your touch typing technique while writing things you would write anyway. Whenever you need to type something on a keyboard, whether it is an email, essay, blog post etc, make a habit of using the touch method for this.

I learnt touch typing a few years ago while I was in a job that consisted of writing a lot of emails. It was badly paid, and large parts of it felt like a waste of my time. I thought I would take advantage of all this time writing emails and use it to practise touch typing. My typing speed increased a lot during that time. So when thinking about it, that job wasn't such a waste of time after all!

Your writing speed is likely to drop and be a lot slower than it was before you started touch typing. But be patient, and remember what I said earlier - n important concept in productivity is to take some time early in a process to invest in something that will save you time long term.

Being good at touch typing relies on muscle memory. This is why it is important to practise while you are writing text that you would write anyway. Otherwise you would spend too much time on just practising instead of using the skill. You can start using the skill shortly after learning the basics. And if you are being disciplined and resist the temptation of looking at your keyboard when you're typing, you will get better really quickly.

Stick with this, and you will develop a fast typing speed that you can take advantage of for the rest of your... typing career. Trust me - you will be happy you did it!

Here are some other tips and a summary of what you have learnt in this article:

• Use this website to learn the basics of touch typing: https://www.typingclub.com/
• As soon as you have learnt some of the basics, practise touch typing while doing your real-life typing tasks so that learning this skill doesn't take up any more time than it has to.
• Your mindset about this should be that this is something you're just "doing" instead of something you have to achieve quickly. This will make you stick at it instead of giving up.
• Touch typing is a bit like playing the piano - Don't do any unnecessary muscle tensing. Use as little of your muscles as possible.
• Use the dots on the F and J key to navigate the keyboard without looking at it.
• Look at touch typing as something you're simply "doing" instead of something you are striving to become good at. This is an important concept. If your goal is to become a fast typist quickly, you can easily become agitated when you don't see results quickly. 
• Resist the temptation of looking at the keyboard. Doing mistakes such as typing the wrong key teaches you a lot as well.
• It helps me to take a quick glance of the keyboard now and then and try to imprint an image of it in my head. That way I will have a visual memory of where the keys are.

Image credits:
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:QWERTY-home-keys-position.svg
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Typing-colour_for-finger-positions.svg