The Hitchhiker's guide to touch typing
A very cool productivty hack people don’t talk about is touch typing. Being able to quickly navigate within your device without even thinking about the next keystroke is a superpower in itself. Here’s how you could work on it.
This is me after practicing typing for 8 months
Forget the mouse, learn keybindings
Forget the mouse, mouse is for normies. You don’t want to go complete Vim mode (maybe you should) but avoid using the mouse as much as you can. I don’t own a mouse for the same reason (though the trackpad works well for me) and this alone has increased my productivity 5x
Learning key bindings can go a long way and it also helps build up muscle memory. UseTheKeyboard is great resource for this.
For navigating within your device, use
- Wox Launcher - Windows 🪟
- Alfred App - Mac 🍎
- ULauncher - Linux 🐧
Where can I learn touch typing?
There are several different websites where you could learn and practice touch typing but my personal favorites are Typing Club and Monkey Type Typing club has quick video lessons followed by a practice playground that helped me a lot during my 35wpm days. Keep following the lessons till you feel confident and then move on to MonkeyType. This where the real magic happens 🪄. Key things to remember while practicing,
- You don’t have to be fast during the initial days. Try to be more accurate instead. You don’t want to end up with 600wpm and 3% accuracy
- Avoid repeating yourself (a keybinding > > two keystrokes)
- If a weak finger is hindering your speed or accuracy then don’t use it.
What keyboard/layout should I use?
The one you already have :D. Ergonomics matters only after a certain level of proficiency but to start, go with the defaults.