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You should type faster

Need for Speed

Mackie Burgess · 2023-11-22

You should at least try.

Being a good typist is one of those evergreen abilities which never stops helping you. Far too often I see the XKCD comic brought up around adding efficiency to our day-to-day lives.

Oftentimes people miss the point.

Hopefully not too many people are convinced of this for typing, but in case there are some contrarians in the crowd: learning to type is an investment for the future. You spend a bunch of time improving, and then you reap the benefits day-on-day, year-on-year. If you spend a significant proportion of your day typing, even a small increase in speed adds up to massive savings across 5 years.

Another benefit is that faster typing generally comes with more accurate typing, more confident typing: less reliant on looking at the keys, more able to rattle something out last minute – which leads into my final point.

Being better at typing means you cash out on the benefits when you really need them. A chaotic group chat where being able to respond in time lets you engage fully, a last-minute email that you really need to get sent out right now, a quick change to a codebase while someone is standing over your shoulder. These opportunities are where your life becomes slightly simpler, all because you dedicated some of your time towards improving at an everyday task.

It also helps when you start writing your daily blog post at 11:35pm.

“I’m fast enough already”: I type at around 110wpm when I’m in the zone, and I still put in some practice towards improving. It’s completely up to you, but there are still gains to be had :)