What would typing faster be like? What would help me get there?

10fastfingers.com says that my average typing speed is 104 wpm (over 13 tests), with a peak of 112wpm. This is on Dvorak, which I taught myself in 2003. On QWERTY, I’m slower (85-90wpm) and definitely not as happy. I like the way Dvorak alternates hands. I learned QWERTY instinctively and Dvorak properly, so I have much better finger-use on Dvorak.

Having recently discovered the typing practice feature on 10fastfingers, I’ve been working on getting rid of the backspace instinct. This is one of the keys to typing faster: increase your speed beyond accuracy, and then let accuracy catch up. Incidentally, the same trick works with speed-reading, where you need to push yourself to read faster than you can comprehend.

I could use AutoHotkey to make my backspace key useless. Hah! For good measure, I’ll disable my left Control as well, since I need to get used to using Caps Lock instead. I tried setting Backspace to SoundBeep before, but that got in the way of mapping something else to Backspace. That’s why the keyboard shortcuts are playing musical chairs.

Backspace::F13
F13::SoundBeep
LCtrl::SoundBeep
Capslock::Control
F12::Backspace

Shut down that typing inhibitor and you’ll type faster, or at least that’s how the theory goes.

I’m somewhat concerned that this will result in Training The Wrong Thing. After all, practice is just as good at solidifying mistakes as it is in improving performance. ;) (Practice Perfect is an excellent book – have you read it?) Still, since I’m supposed to reread my blog posts for typos anyway, I guess it can’t hurt.

Typing speed isn’t my bottleneck, though. It’s thinking speed. But since that seems to be harder to improve (maybe games? improv?), I can work on other aspects instead.

I occasionally experiment with speech recognition as a way of speeding up input and making phrases more natural. So far, I’ve discovered I’m definitely not used to talking my way through a topic, although I’m sure that’ll yield to practice. Dragon’s model of my speech is getting good enough that I can use it to dictate notes from books with minimal editing, which comes in handy when I’m taking notes on books that aren’t interesting enough to sketchnote in full. (I didn’t dictate this blog post because my headset is still recharging.)

Outlining is going to be a big help too, I think. I’ve got blog posts scheduled up to September. It’s now super-easy for me to sit down and start writing, knowing where the post fits in the grand scheme of things. A number of people have expressed interest in the Accelerated Learning with Sketchnotes idea, so I might go ahead and prototype parts of it to see how that works out. =)

As for code (the other place where typing speed really pays off), I find that the more I learn, the less I need to write. Increasing my productivity is more about understanding the problem or idea, knowing about (and applying!) good practices, and making the most of available tools and libraries.

But it’s still fun inching up one’s typing speed, just because. I know people who type at 120wpm+, so clearly, it’s possible. Still, RSI is a real danger (I know people who’ve mostly had to stop typing, although this is a different set of people!). Don’t optimize this too much. ;)

It might be fun to spend a few weeks seeing if this is a skill that yields to deliberate practice. Do you want to try the deliberate practice experiment with me so that we can combine our results? It probably looks like a 10-15min daily practice session (10 minutes of typing practice, and a few tests).

I’m also curious about the Colemak layout, which is supposed to have better rolling. I’ll learn that eventually. =)

First, I have to get used to the weirdness I’ve imposed on myself (no Backspace key, no left Control key). Then it’s off to the races!

Image credits: Training (CartoonResource, Shutterstock)