Tooling

Increase Your Typing Speed ⌨️

Yohan de Rose

Sep 7, 2022 — 3 min read

The practice resources and hardware I used to go from 25 WPM to 100 WPM in a month.

Far from the typical areas men like to exaggerate, I hid my actual typing speed in shame. Well into a real job, I was caught looking down for the space bar.

Not only does it look and feel slow, but a bump in speed is, in theory, a bump in throughput, reducing the latency between idea and realisation.

Touch Typing

The biggest hurdle is using the correct finger for each key. This is the hardest part, not because learning the finger-key bindings is hard, but because it's easy to revert to old habits after learning.

TypingClub is a free website for kids and noobs to learn touch typing with engaging visuals and mini-games. It starts from a beginner level, so aim to progress to at least capital letters, but numbers and punctuation would be ideal.

Practice

It's crucial to focus on accuracy at first. The speed will come.

Monkeytype and Keybr are excellent free practice tools. They both lay out a text passage and highlight characters as you type correctly. I'd recommend Keybr as it tracks progress in detail - error-prone keys, speed, tricky combinations - and adapts the passages to focus on weak points.

Hardware

Keyboard hobbyists are the junkies of tech — broke, twitching for the next drop, and a stain on any social occasion. Use what you have. Keyboards won't make you a better typist but can make learning and practising more enjoyable.

There are two different types - the flat chiclet and chunkier mechanical. IMHO the best flat chiclet out there is the Magic Keyboard 2 because of its build quality and weighty travel.

For mechanical, go for the Corsair K70 or, my favourite stock keyboard, the Roccat Vulcan 121. I recommend watching some videos on the difference between linear, tactile and clicky switches if the mechanical option appeals.

And that's it. Keep in mind speed gains directly result from how much you practice, and progress is logarithmic.

Chuck on a movie or podcast, crack open a 'reward wine' if you're practising punctuation and numbers, and an hour or so a night is plenty.

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