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How To Type At 100+ Words Per Minute
The average typing speed is roughly 40 words per minute (WPM). However, I suspect the average Medium writer probably types a little faster than that.
A couple of months ago I came across this YouTube video by Ali Abdaal where he talks about typing over 150 WPM. Ali has been practicing on a website called 10 Fast Fingers for more than 10 years.
After watching the video, I decided to make a deliberate effort to improve my typing speed.
My initial speed was around 72 WPM which was already above average. But I am happy to say that after almost two months and over 1,800 completed tests later, I managed to reach a high of 106 WPM.
This result puts me among the top 2% on the website.
The top performers on the site are regularly smashing 170+ WPM so my achievement isn’t freakish by any means.
Here are some practical tips for improving your typing speed.
Touch Typing Is A Must
You want to get to a point where you never look at the keys when you type.
At a minimum, you want to be able to type the letter, punctuation, return and backspace keys without looking.
Don’t fuss over the number or special symbol keys because you won’t be using them very often.
If you don’t touch type, I suggest you follow some tutorials on YouTube. It’s important to have a strong foundation that you can build on.
One thing that helped my cousin learn to touch type was getting a blank keyboard where none of the keys were labelled. It cost him less than $20.
Personally, I just learned not to look at the keyboard.
Deliberate Practice
In order to improve quickly, you need to focus on what will get you the most gains.
- Minimize mistakes
It seems obvious but nothing slows down your typing more than typing the wrong…
