Focus – is arguably the most valuable asset. All other, like time, money, health or even relationships have no meaning without focus.
It is easy to loose our focus during typing if we have never mastered touch-typing and are in need to shift our sight between the screen and the keyboard back and forth constantly.
Mimicking typing movement is clearly not difficult. A toddler will learn the tapping motions before learn how to talk. However mastering typing and being effective with it – is a journey.
In spite of existance of highly developed voice-recognition algorithms, typing remains an easily accessible way of entering information and it does not require much explanation.
Just like any other skill, if it is not mastered correctly from the beginning – it becomes a “broken” habit, which is harder to fix with time.
Efficient typing relies on two essential abilities.
- Using specific fingers for each key.
- Developing finger agility.
Once you become aware of these two secret ingredients, which make up the typing skill – you will learn to control the fingers efficiently. After mastering the basics of the correct finger layout – your speed will start picking up.
1. Using the right fingers for each key.
In order to master the memory of the keyboard layout, all we need is to practice typing, with or without seeing the keyboard; the more we move our fingers from key-to-key in repeatable manner – the stronger becomes our tactile memory. Just like it takes time to become good at any sport – it takes practice to become good at typing .
This is why typing games – is a good way of learning typing.
Learn correct finger positioning from the beginning.
Be wary of the wrong finger placement. Your fingers will learn the behavior that you will teach them. And if you have not learnt proper finger placement at the beginning, your fingers will be no help for you, when you will be typing later on.
What is correct finger placement? The “touch-typing” layout.
There are four fingers on each hand, which should be striking the letter keys.
The thumbs are used to strike only the spacebar.
The index fingers are the most “privileged” here and control two columns each. The ring finger, the middle finger and the pinkie – should be controlling only one column of the keys.
This finger layout is well-known as the “touch-typing” layout. The benefits of having “in charge” of specific groups of keys are those that there now all finger moves are minimal, and even with closed eyes a person would be able to type without typos. Please note, that keys with letters “F” and “J” have little bumps on them. This is to help you always locate these keys by simply hovering over with your fingers.
2. Developing finger agility.
We might be familiar with the keyboard layout since the times we did not remember ourselves, when we were children.
What is noticeably harder to achieve – is finger agility. (How many people may claim that their pinkies are involved in typing as much as the ring-finger). The further we get away from the index finger – the harder it is to control our fingers.
However, even this skill is a subject to training. Just like in any sports, the more we are involved in an activity – the better we get. Similarly, it is important to let those idling fingers in typing. I encourage you, from now on, to start using all fingers all the way to the pinkies and the result will not make you wait.
Why seeing a keyboard will not hurt your typing skills?
There is an unsupported belief that in order to master blind typing, one should “never-ever look at the keyboard”. However there are multiple proofs that the opposite is true:
SEEING THE KEYBOARD HAS POSITIVE EFFECT ON LEARNING THE KEYBOARD LAYOUT .
In a number of experiments held at the VIATYPING Innovations lab. an opposite conclusion was made: seeing the keyboard is crucial to learning 10-finger typing. In addition, seeing the keyboard helps establishing better hand-eye coordination, which ultimately helps speeding up the training of your fingers.
How long does it take to improve?
fact: On average, 1 hour of practice improves your typing rate by 1 WPM (Words-Per-Minute). f.e. if you want to improve your typing speed by 10 WPMs – you need to spend 10 hours practicing.
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