Type faster: My journey from 50 to 100+ WPM
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Have you ever wondered how some people type as fast as they speak?
I used to type at 50 words per minute (WPM), but with a few tweaks, I doubled my speed!
Mastering Touch Typing: The Key to Faster Typing
Most people (my past self included) never learned proper typing, so they don't follow a system and type at a speed of ~40 WPM.
While nothing is wrong with that, you can go way faster by practicing and using a better system.
This is where touch typing comes into place.
With touch typing, you will use every finger to type and remember key positions using muscle memory, so you don't have to look at the keyboard while typing.
Touch typing will help you type faster, improve your accuracy, and enhance your focus, as you type on autopilot.
For me, the last point was the most important. None of your brain power will be wasted thinking about how to type, you just look at your screen and think about what you want to write and let your fingers do the rest.
How does touch typing work?
The idea is that every finger has a specific set of keys to press.
The left hand lays on A,S,D,F and the right on J,K,L,;. The right thumb lays on space.
Some keyboards have a ridge on the F and J key that help you place your index fingers. You should take advantage of this and align your fingers using these ridges.
How do I learn fast typing?
Many people think touch typing is hard but it's actually very easy. You need to practice it over and over again and don't give up.
I failed the first two times because I was much slower in the beginning and then I quit.
The third time I just forced myself to continue practicing and you should too.
It won't take long until you will be on the same level as before and then you will become faster.
In the beginning, I recommend to focus only on one or a few keys and constantly add keys when you have the existing ones in muscle memory.
One awesome website that does this automatically is Keybr.
I practiced on Keybr for ~15 hours within several months which was a bit over 1,800 lessons.
Very quickly I was as fast as before touch typing and from there the WPM only went up further.
I would suggest to practice approx. 30 mins each day.
These are the stats for the first months on Keybr:
| Month | WPM | Accuracy (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Oct. 2022 | 34 | 97.5 |
| Nov. 2022 | 52 | 96.2 |
| Dec. 2022 | 65 | 96.9 |
| Jan. 2023 | 65 | 96.8 |
| Feb. 2023 | 73 | 97.4 |
| Mar. 2023 | 79 | 97.3 |
| Apr. 2023 | 76 | 96.7 |
I also started using touch typing for work and university as soon as I had all the keys in my muscle memory. This also trained typing numbers, capital letters, and punctuation as I didn't train these often on Keybr.
After I felt confident, I switched to Monkeytype. For some reason, I find practicing on Monkeytype more enjoyable. On Monkeytype, the progress was slower but still, I managed to go from 80 WPM to over 100 WPM.
All in all, it was definitely worth it and turned out there is no secret to learn fast typing. Just practice consistently.
Be careful when practicing with small word sets (e.g., Top 500 English words). You will become very fast on these but your brain will start putting whole words in muscle memory. For example, sometimes I want to write 'thing' but my touch typing autopilot types 'think' because I practiced it so often. To avoid this, I would try to practice with larger sets of words (e.g., Top 25,000 English words).
Extra: Switching to US keyboard layout
Especially if you are coding, I would highly recommend switching to a US keyboard layout if you haven't already. Important keys like [, {, ; etc. are much easier to press on a US layout.
Next steps
You might wonder if touch typing is the only thing to improve typing but there are actually more.
First, there are other keyboard layouts like Colemak or Dvorak which seem to be more ergonomic and offer faster typing speeds.
You might want to try them once you mastered touch typing. I haven't try them yet.
Second, there are also different types of keyboards for example split keyboards, ergonomic keyboards etc.
Since I am working on my laptop quite often, I don't see these as an advantage for myself but they might be for you.
Key takeaways
- Typing fast isn't hard
- Practice regularly (ideally 15+ mins per day)
- Start with a few keys and include more if you have the first in muscle-memory. Use a tool like Keybr that does this for you automatically
- Use a larger word set to have some variation during practice
- Optional: Switch to US layout for faster coding
- Optional: Switch to a more ergonomic keyboard