If you’ve ever spoken to or seen a dedicated gamer playing computer games, you’ll see they are likely very quick to type and use the keyboard, without even looking at it.
For a gamer, being slow to type can make the difference between losing and winning.
And in the interest of saving/shaving off response time, gamers have often done something that can help us all save lots of time need to: they’ve learned how to type.
I never really considered how I type to be something important or that would affect my productivity before.
However, having re-trained my hands to use all 10 fingers on how to type, I’ve found the following useful benefits:
I’m writing emails more quickly
I’m taking notes more quickly
I’m able to sit and type for longer than before (my hands feel more comfortable)
We do it for hours and hours sometimes, typing away.
For those of us who have laptop dependent work, this is an inescapable part of our lives. And it’s only increasing.
Given all this, I realised I had never actually sat down and learned how to type, or learned how to hold my hands at a keyboard properly.
And in doing so, I’ve found an unusual way to save time in life: to have the skill of typing quickly and efficiently.
It is not just about typing speed, it is also about ergonomics and muscle comfort.
It is always these seemingly small things that seem to add up in life.
The way incredible things were built, whether it was the pyramids, or extreme amounts of wealth, incremental progress compounds and adds up.
I think typing properly is the same: typing just a tiny bit more quickly or efficiently saves these barely noticeable slithers of time and energy.
Even if it is just nano-seconds within nano-seconds. Over the days, weeks, years, it really must add up.
A strange reality of our lives now is that we spend most of them, even our socialising, in front of a screen and typing at a computer.
In many ways, re-learning how to type has been fun and interesting, since it affects my daily life quite considerably.
Here’s how I’ve been learning how to type:
Checking my typing speed occasionally using Ten Fast Fingers:
Training & practicing my general typing using all ten fingers here:
Like most things I start learning, I got worse at the beginning before I got better.
Now I’m somewhat better than I was before… but definitely feel I am on the way to productive and speedy typing that saves time. :)
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