How Is Your Touch Typing Going?

Daniel Scocco

As you might remember back in 2009 I decided to learn how to touch type. Before that I used mostly two fingers to type, although I was not bad at it, with a speed of around 60 words per minute.

Here’s the post where I talked about making the switch: You Got to Learn Touch Typing

Looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made productivity-wise. In fact around six months after making the switch as I was already up to 100 words per minute (I wrote about that here: Update About the Touch Typing Experiment).

After that I stopped all types of training and just kept working normally. Then last week I decided to measure my typing speed again (using the 10 Fast Fingers website), just for fun. Check out the result:

touch-typing

With 115 words per minute I am pretty much twice as fast today compared to when I decided to learn touch typing. Also, you don’t need to type that fast. Even if you go from 40 to 80 words per minute you are doubling your typing productivity anyway.

Add up all the hours you spend in front of a keyword and you’ll get a bunch of free hours at the end of the year.

What about you, has your typing speed improved over the past years?

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15 Responses to “How Is Your Touch Typing Going?”

  • Mike

    Better than 50%, and here I am thinking I perfected my 2-finger-typing-game. To be honest, I always wanted to learn touch-typing, but didn’t make time for it. But as you said, thinking about all these hours in front of the keyboard, maybe it is smart to invest some time so I can safe time.

  • Charles from CodeConquest.com

    What was interesting when I took the test was that I got a score of 71 typing at my normal speed, but then took the test again, typing as fast as I could (without making mistakes of course) and got a score of 81. So my comfortable typing speed is not my maximum possible. Anyone else find this?

  • Daniel Scocco

    @George, did your searching on Google for “touch typing”?

    @Ricardo, 25.

  • Ricardo

    Hi Daniel,

    One question: how old where you when you decided to learn to type with all 10 fingers?

  • John C

    This is a rare topic but much appreciated. I was only better than about 70% of people, your 115 blows me away completely. I never spent time actually focusing on that skill though, I just picked it up by using a keyboard for so long. Might be worth a try.

  • Chan Huu

    OMG… My WPM is 96 😀 I’m using RapidTyping to improve typing speed 🙂
    Thanks for sharing 😉

  • Shahzad Saeed

    Daniel,
    This is what we call down to earth advice.. You even talk about your typing speed and that is why I am visiting your blog for many years 🙂
    Anyway, about typing speed. I am pretty good at typing using 2 hands. I am using almost every fingers for typing. But the position keeping my right hand on keyboard has to be improved. i’ll be trying for it hereafter. Never looked at words per min.
    Thanks

  • Amanda

    That should be *transcribe.

  • Amanda

    I’ve been touch-typing since the first grade, but I had to learn that early because my teachers didn’t read Braille so that meant that I had to stranscribe all of my assignments into print. I can type about 130 words per minute with about 90% accuracy, but would like to improve that. Guess I need to spend more time with my keyboard. I’ll also add that it’s easier for me to touch-type using a standard querty desktop keyboard or typewriter than it is using a laptop keyboard, and I completely suck at touch-typing on the iThings.

  • Gilbert

    I now know where i am.

    Better than 68%, still something has to be done. Someone needs to sharpen.
    Thanks for sharing Daniel.

  • Sabbir

    That is incredible. I think we all can increase our typing speed by trying this. Thank you Daniel

  • Angraj

    Thanks Daniel for giving nice links to measure typing speed.

  • Carlos

    Thanks for the tips. Typing is an activity we do so frequently, and yet people don’t pay enough attention to do it well. I know friends who pick keys with two fingers… it seems incredible how can they spend the whole day doing this. Spending a few hours learning to touch type is one of the best things you can do for your productivity.

  • George from seekdefo

    Daniel i didn’t quite actually understand your post. What exactly is touch typing

  • Mike Panic

    Just did this, 84 WPM, 453 keystrokes, 80 correct words, 6 wrong words.

    Better than 93.34%

    I’d like to think that if I took it a second time I’d be a little faster, now knowing how the words jump around and how when it ends in the lower right corner your eyes must move to the top left to get the next word. Considering I’m 33 years old and learned to touch type on a typewriter in 7th grade, I’m pretty happy that I’ve been able to keep that kind of speed up.

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