Should you learn touch typing?

2025-01-14T00:00:00Z

Is there any value spending time and learning how to touch type in the era of powerful IDEs, AI autocompletion, or AI simply being able to churn out pages and pages of code in seconds. This was the question I asked myself and tried to answer surfing the internet. If you want the short answer contrary to what Betteridge law of headlines would suggest is a resounding YES! If you are spending any significant time in front of a computer, enough to be curious enough to ask the question should I learn how to touch type my opinion is that you should.

For the longest time I have used computers using the standard gamer hand positioning (pinky to index, shift-A-W-D) and using 6-7 fingers to type some characters from the heart and some characters hunting & pecking. I would have considered myself a regular typer and would think in most of the tasks I do on the computer I never thought my typing speed was hampering my output in any significant way so I must be ok with my self taught somewhat embarrasing but working typing technique. This was horrendously wrong. First of all I did not understand my main problem. Everytime you look at the keyboard it significantly hampers down your ability to think about what you are trying to accomplish. This creates a certain workflow where your time is spent in two distinct phases. Design phase where you are looking at the screen and thinking, trying to understand everything and have a clear idea about what you will write. This does not necessarily mean you always have to one shot everything and write the correct version but even for trying to understand how to write something you have to have a clear idea about what you would like to try out as a solution, and then comes the execution phase where you try to write what you have in mind semi looking at the screen and semi looking at the keyboard when needed. This is not ok! I worked as a full time programmer for years without ever learning how to touch type and using the above mentioned two phase system. Being able to touch type completely eliminated the arbitrary boundary caused by my lack of ability between designing and execution and only now I find myself seeing how my productivity has been hampered down for years. All this time it was significantly harder for me to enter a flow state because my process was much harder than it needed to be. Anyone who creates for a living can easily understand the immense benefit of being able to enter a flow state. It is so magical that we cannot believe we are capable of such feats so we create muses just to justify how out of the world a flow state can be. Muses aren't real but their effect certainly is. Being completely locked in, being in the zone, having your head in the game, all describe the same phenomenon. Only way to do it is paying your full attention to what you have in front of you and completely losing yourself in the work. That is simply much much harder to do when you have to stop thinking about what you are doing and have to focus on where is the '|' key on my keyboard.

Another benefit is that I used to think that I would never be able to use vim keybindings because it seemed like only gods chosen people would be able to accomplish such a feat. I tried to use vim keybinding a couple of times before I learned touch typing and never was able to memorize the keybindings. It seems obvious now because the reason I was not able to memorize them is becuase you are not supposed to. If you know how to touch type and know the vim keybindings by heart you are already half decent user and as time goes on your hands learn more and more moves so you can execute them by muscle memory but if muscle memory fails your ability to touch type saves you. You just need to think "what was the letters for the keybinding" and not the hand position. I think vim tutorials would be much more approachable if they explicitly mention you should seriously consider learning touch typing before ever trying to learn vim.

If touch typing is so good for you and if it is amazing why haven't I tried it before is a question I have asked myself and there is an simple answer. Whenever I even tried to put my fingers on the home row (asdf jkl;) it always felt terrible. My wrists bent in unnatural ways. I couldn't ever imagine writing in that fashion. When your left hand is on shift-A-W-D your wrist is in a very comfortable natural position. When it is on the home row you have to really bent your wrist toward the left and the moment I tried it, I imagined I would never want to write in that position. I am still agreeing with my past self about this. If things stayed as the status quo and I used a regular laptop or standalone keyboard I would have never learned touch typing. Buying a split keyboard was one of the best decisions I ever made. At the time of writing this post I am using the ZSA Moonlander. It has a ortholinear layout instead of a staggered one. Which means the keys are in a proper grid and not slightly shifted across lines. For the keyboard efficionados I am using the Cherry MX2A Brown Switches. I used Silent Reds at first thinking I would be annoyed by the constant click clack of a mechanical keyboard. Thankfully tactile switches like Cherry Browns are not that terrible in the sound department (I really miss how silent the Silent Red's were), but Silent Red's were horrible to type with. Just grazing a key activates it and they can't hold even the weight of your fingers. If you are a professional typist and you are not making any mistakes they probably would be really fast to type. If you are prone to making some mistakes now and then they are not forgiving. I would suggest anyone who is learning touch typing and considering buying a new keyboard with mechanical switches, either go with a tactile switch or a linear switch with a really high actuation force and resistance. I would like to add please if you are considering how to learn touch typing do consider buying a comfortable keyboard.

If you are convinced that knowing how to touch type is valuable and you either have a comfortable keyboard or planning to buy one, let's dive into how you can learn how to touch type.

Good news is you don't need much. I only used two resources, TypingClub and MonkeyType. Both are fantastic. TypingClub has a subscription option but I have never used it. My recommendation would be to start with a resource like TypingClub to learn how to touch type before even visiting MonkeyType. Forgetting all the little quirks that you have developed over the years is surprisingly hard. When I first started with TypingClub it asked me to do a placement test. Doing the placement test with your old and wrong typing style is a big mistake. If you are completely new to touch typing just begin from the start and learn the fundamentals. Until the first couple of lessons told me that there are little lines at the bottom of the f and j keys in every keyboard because those are the places where you should put your index fingers and those should be anchors for your fingers is something that I never noticed them or knew what they were for. Starting from the fundamentals always pays off. My first classes with trying to touch type were painful because I was fighting against all my reflexes and could type (not joking) 3-5 words per minute. For comparison with my bad typing skills I could get 40-45 word per minute without trying really hard. Thankfully that stage of the learning process does not take that long. If you practice every day for a month it should be possible to write as fast as you were doing before you started touch typing and simply this would be great because you will be able to achieve this speed without looking at the keyboard and breaking your focus. Probably not a lot of people would stop at this stage if they started though. If you can try to go up to something like 70-80 words per minute that is a more reasonable place to stop pushing yourself.

While studying with TypingClub once you are at your old typing speed with touch typing that is the point to introduce MonkeyType. I would suggest not using the regular English word list but using English 1k or 5k. Also enabling punctuation and numbers. They really slow you down but in regular life they are constantly used so why not practice them. I try to do at least 3 MonkeyType sessions everyday to keep my typing skills sharp. Do whatever feels like best to you.

Knowing your tools is a good mantra to live by. I am striving to learn more about computers and other tools I am using everyday more and more. Knowing your tools empowers you to do more and unlocks doors that you didn't know even existed. I couldn't learn vim before learning how to touch type. If you are a regular computer user and use your computer as a tool to accomplish your goals and objectives, seriously consider how to touch type. You will thank yourself.