How to Type Fast on a Keyboard: 12 Tips That Actually Work
If you want to type more quickly without losing your accuracy, here are 12 useful tips — not general advice, not motivational posters — just things that actually work.
You aren’t born with the ability to type quickly; it’s a skill, just like juggling or riding a bike. The typical person types at about 40 words per minute (WPM). Anyone can achieve 70 to 100 WPM or more with good technique and by practicing regularly. That’s not an exaggeration — this is exactly what regular practice leads to.
No matter if you’re a student going through their lecture notes, a remote worker buried in Slack messages, or a writer whose fingers can’t keep up with their mind, becoming quicker at typing actually gives you back real time — hours on a weekly basis, not just imagined ones.
1. Learn touch typing (yes, really)
The one that is most important is touch typing, which involves using all ten fingers without having to look at the keyboard. The left hand should rest on the A-S-D-F keys and the right hand on the J-K-L-; keys. Since each finger is in charge of a particular group of keys, less movement of the hands takes place and your brain does not have to use energy searching for the letters.
For someone who has been typing with two fingers for years, making the change is unpleasant. At first you’ll type more slowly and will make more errors. After a few weeks, muscle memory takes effect and you’ll reach the speed you had before. The difficult period is brief. The benefit is long-lasting.
2. Cease looking at the keyboard
Whenever you look down at the keys, you disrupt the rhythm and lose your position within the sentence. It’s as if you were reading a book but were to take brief glances at every few words — then you lose the line of the narrative.
Keep looking at the screen, even if that means you have to type more slowly at first; for the majority of people who are just starting out, this one change results in the greatest increase in speed, and although it is uncomfortable for around a week it eventually ceases to be so.
3. Focus on developing a good structure rather than merely repeating things.
No good will come from typing the same sentence fifty times if your form is bad. The tools that make a real difference are those which track your performance and target your weak spots:
TypingClub
Keybr
10FastFingers
Monkeytype
They adjust to your habits; if you continually mistype punctuation or have difficulty with particular combinations of letters, they will give you more practice with those until you get them right. They’re a lot more useful than ordinary drills.
4. Prioritise getting the accuracy right first
It may seem as though going through practice is productive, but it isn’t. Each typo costs you — you have to stop, notice the mistake, backspace and retype the word. The whole process is almost always slower than typing the word correctly the first time.
It is best to achieve a level of accuracy of 95 to 100 per cent before increasing your speed. Going faster without being accurate is merely a series of mistakes.
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5. Sit properly
Yes, it’s boring but also important to have your back straight, your shoulders relaxed and your elbows at about 90 degrees; your wrists should hang above the keyboard — they should not be pressed down onto the desk or a wrist rest while you’re typing.
Bad posture leads to fatigue, tension, and slower typing, and it also puts you at risk of developing repetitive strain injuries, which will bring your speed down to zero.
6. Your keyboard matters
Mechanical keyboards fitted with responsive switches are generally quicker than inexpensive membrane ones since they require less force for each keystroke and provide better tactile feedback — which allows you to feel when a key has been registered without the key bottoming out. Split keyboards and ergonomic designs also help to reduce strain when using them for long periods, thus preventing your speed from decreasing as the hours pass.
A keyboard costing $200 isn’t necessary, but if you’re using one that’s only worth $5 and it feels as if you’re poking a sponge, then getting an upgrade is advisable.
7. Learn keyboard shortcuts
It’s not merely a question of typing letters since you should not have to leave the keyboard every thirty seconds. Shortcuts such as Ctrl+C (to copy), Ctrl+V (to paste), Ctrl+Backspace (to delete a whole word), and Ctrl+Arrow (to move between words) eliminate small delays which build up during a writing session.
Your actual words per minute may remain the same, but your effective typing speed will.
8. Get your hands warmed up
Athletes shouldn’t start off cold, and you shouldn’t either. A few minutes of easy typing or some simple finger stretches before a long session will loosen your joints and get your muscle memory going. This is particularly useful when you’re doing it first thing in the morning or after having had lunch.
Almost no time at all; it actually does make a difference.
9. Set actual goals
The aim is not to type faster. Rather, the objective is to reach 60 words per minute by the end of the month, and also to improve accuracy from 92 per cent to 97 per cent this week. Setting specific targets gives you something to measure your progress against, which prevents your motivation from fading after the first few days.
The majority of the practice tools mentioned above will keep track of your figures for you.
10. Write real content, not just practice exercises.
Drills help to build up basic skills, but real typing is different. When you have a basic level, move on to actual emails, articles, or transcriptions. Only by using natural sentences with all sorts of punctuation, odd capitalisation, and genuine structure can your brain be trained in a way that repetitive exercises cannot.
By the way, it’s not so boring, which is why you’ll really carry it out.
11. Don’t try to carry out more than one task at the same time when you are typing.
Checking your phone during the middle of a sentence, quickly looking at a different tab, and talking while your hands continue working — all of these things disrupt your flow and reduce your average typing speed. When you sit down to type, just type, work in concentrated bursts and keep your hands in rhythm.
You never play the piano while you’re scrolling through Instagram. The same goes for that.
12. Practice every day. Even 10 minutes helps.
A single session on Sunday is less effective than ten to fifteen minutes of focused typing each day. Since typing is a physical skill, such skills benefit from spaced repetition rather than from cramming. It is consistency that develops the muscle memory which makes fast typing seem automatic.
O.k. to skip one day, but not two.
There’s no secret trick to it — just a matter of using sound technique, sticking to accurate practice, and making sure you turn up regularly. Get your fingers in the right position at the start, don’t rush into speed until you’ve really earned it, and keep an eye on your progress so that you know it’s having an effect. After a few weeks you’ll notice the difference and after a few months it won’t seem like any effort at all.
If you’re preparing for a typing test, are trying to get through your inbox, or are simply tired of your fingers not keeping up with your thoughts, then these 12 tips will help you. The drawback is that you actually have to carry them out.
