Touch typing lessons

I learned to touch type a long time ago, before computers were around. It was a skill I wanted to learn and I was willing to put in the time and effort necessary to learn it. I had always admired the way some people could type without constantly looking at the keyboard and I wanted to be able to do it as well. I vaguely remember reading about how to go about it, although I can’t remember the book (probably Teach Yourself Touch Typing). There were exercises, and the only way you could progress successfully was by taking them in turn, patiently.

I’ve often thought about that learning process because it taught me a lot, besides touch typing. I put in a certain amount of work every day, and I progressed slowly. I remember I started to follow the exercises, which in the early stages were primarily repetitive and boring, and within a few days I decided I’d stick with it for 100 days. It seemed a reasonable amount of time to achieve what I wanted, and I stuck with the plan. Three months, I thought, and I’d have it cracked!

Steady progress …

I typed one sheet of work every day, that’s all. The very first few days were just repeating certain groups of letters again and again, such as asdf and jkl; till you built up the ability to find the letters easily just by placing your fingers on the home keys at the start and ‘feeling’ where the letters were. Like I said, boring. But it worked. Within a matter of days I’d learned where the letters were on all three rows and I was able to progress to typing short words. Repeatedly!

I’m not going to drag you along, painfully slowly, through the whole 100 days, but the fact is I was typing proper words fairly quickly, and soon progressing to sentences. Doesn’t sound exciting, I know, but it was a great learning experience. I was moving from staring at the keyboard and picking each and every letter to just almost miraculously finding them by touch.

Here’s a few of the things I learned by studying touch typing:

• Have a plan, and stick to it.
• When you make mistakes, just keep going. There will always be mistakes.
• Work on it every day, even when you’re not in the mood.
• Believe you can do it, even when progress seems painfully slow.
• Do a set amount of work every day, minimum (I settled on a single page of type, but that was hard work in the early stages).
• Be prepared to be bored! It’s worth it in the end.
• Allow your brain time to assimilate new skills.
• Remind yourself that this is a skill that will benefit you for life. It’s that kind of thing that keeps you going.
• You don’t have to be perfect. I don’t deal with number very much, so I never spent a lot of time practising using the number keys. For me, it just wasn’t worth it.
• Focus on the most important stuff and leave the rest alone (the numbers again!).

By the time I reached Day 100 I was still typing just one page a day but it was a proper page of text. I was typing stuff as I was thinking it, the way I’m doing right now, and it was amazing to be able to get those thoughts on paper quickly and easily. I knew then that I would only get better as time went on. I had put the time in and I had learned the skill. That’s what it takes.

Oh, there’s another thing to go in that list I just made … keep records!

Track your progress

I kept the single page I typed each day and I punched holes in it and put the page into a folder. They were headed Day 1, etc. As time went on I was able to look through the sheets of paper and see the progress I’d made. The first pages were endlessly repetitive letter groupings, gradually progressing to words and sentences, showing I was learning something. It’s important to be able to see your progress. That definitely helps keep you on track.

Touch typing might not be important for you, but the things that allowed me to learn it can be applied to anything you want to learn. And by the way, if you use a computer (and you obviously do) then you use a keyboard fairly regularly. It would be helpful to be able to touch type, even if all you do is write emails and type in comments on Facebook. If you haven’t learned to touch type yet, it might be worth considering putting the time in to learn it. A few months from now you could be typing like a professional!