Tools for Thought

For most of us these days, the computer is the hub of our production, research, entertainment and even socializing. One of the most critical keys to computer fluency — more than word processing, spreadsheet manipulation or even web browsing — is increasing typing speed.

The keyboard is the primary interface on all desktop computers and most applications, so training the fingers to know their way around it autonomically build helps build confidence and competence in just about anything that needs to be done in a digital world. Increased typing speed is a rising tide that lifts all boats.

Typing speed doesn’t need to be exceptional to be effective; it just needs to be fluent. Hunting and pecking requires at least some degree of conscious effort, making it a persistent distraction. Establishing a mature, error-free typing speed shifts the emphasis from how to type to what to type.

Fifty words per minute is a good baseline for fluent typing. Every increase in speed beyond this is a commensurate gain in productivity. Given the same rate of composition, writers (people writing anything from a novel to an email) who double their typing speed obviously double their output. While some writers to self-consciously deliberate every word, many writers think out sentences faster than they can type. For the latter group, typing speed becomes their bottleneck.

Slow typing also prevents many people from replying immediately to emails that could be answered in under two minutes at the baseline rate. Hunting and pecking makes email far more labor intensive than it needs to be.

Typing trainers

There are many different approaches to developing typing skills, from typing classes to books, but I would recommend either training software designed for the purpose, like Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, or an online typing trainer, like the Flash-based web application at Typing-lessons.org.

Shortcut keys

Learning to use the shortcut keys for your operating system, office suite, browser, or any applications being used on a daily basis will eliminate another speed bottleneck: the mouse. The shortcut keys for clipboard commands (e.g. Ctrl-C for Copy on Windows) are four times faster than using a mouse to navigate to the menu.

A good habit to get into when using the mouse is clicking on the menu with the command you want to select; then instead of selecting it with the mouse, use the shortcut key combination listed to the right of the command. You’ll memorize the shortcuts for your most frequently used commands very quickly. Find out where the shortcut key reference is in the applications you use the most. In the text editor I use for blogging, Q10, all of the shortcuts are listed in the Help card that comes up by hitting F1. In Google applications like Gmail, the question mark (Shift-/) brings up the shortcut key reference.