Road to Typing 100 WPM

I have come up with a goal to type 100 wpm by the end of the year. 100 is a somewhat random number but hitting the triple digits sounds nice so I’m going for it. I started this goal the beginning August with a generous WPM of 68 from my quickest measured typing test.

How I started out

Before, I was a peek and pecker, this is my modified version to the ‘hunt and peck’ typing style, versus the ‘touch typing’ style, however my ‘peek and peck’ typing was a step above the ‘hunt and peck’ where I would peek at the keyboard every few letters. To say the least, I was not a very good typist. In school I could never type without looking at the keyboard and when I did type it was slow and annoying. If I procrastinated too much on an essay I would ask my Dad to type it out for me because he was so quick. I marveled at fast typists.

When I was younger I watched my grandma on the computer typing without looking at the keyboard, I was mesmerized, how could she do this? She could magically press the correct letter each time, speeding away at her work. In the evening I’d jump on the computer and pretend I was her typing at lightning grandma speed.

First, I needed a featured image for my paper, this would always be a cool looking cheetah. After I got the important part done, I’d begin mashing away without looking at the keyboard, pressing every random button I could muster until I had a decent paragraph size of nonsense letters, numbers and spaces jumbled together. I don’t think I actually ever typed a real word, it didn’t seem possible at that time.

Time to make a change

Flash forward many years to Covid 2020, when everyone had extra time. This could be the perfect time to learn how to type correctly. I focused on the basic fundamentals and used 10fastfingers.com for easy typing tests. Their typing tests are great because they have a separate box to type in your queued word and they focus on the most popular 200 words.

Using this simple way of improving I would race my friends to continue to boost my best score. I wouldn’t spend too much time each day, but I would always take a few tests day to ensure I was still slowly increasing my speed. At this point I had progressed to an approvable 50-60 wpm.

Changing to Dvorak Typing Layout

During my Senior year of college I did something drastic and decided to switch to using the Dvorak keyboard. I got a small pin tool and pried each key off my laptop and replaced them in a crazy jumble on the keyboard compared to Qwerty.

If you are unfamiliar with the Dvorak typing keyboard, it’s supposed to be faster than Qwerty (Qwerty was invented for the type writer, trying to slow you down so you wouldn’t press 2 keys at the same time and jam/stick them). The Dvorak keyboard is actually a really cool idea, here are the main things you should know about it: it maximizes the Home Row (placing the most common letters there) and it focuses on rolling (the left hand is all the vowels and the right hand is the most popular consonants) your hands working together as you type.

As you can see in the image above, this is a heat map of the most common keys lit up. It’s much easier to type when your fingers don’t need to move off the home row as frequently. Thanks to Aimee Rivers for the picture of the Dvorak/Qwerty heat map, she prefers to use the Colemak keyboard layout. Colemake looks appealing but I don’t know if I want to go through the pain of switching again.

The pain of switching to Dvorak was like a turtle towing an airplane, I was slow. It probably took me a week to type more than 10 wpm, but slowly I progressed, I had the old tricks I learned from using Qwerty and my fingers were stronger than when I first began. To give you an idea, here are the keys that stay the same between Qwerty and Dvorak.

Within a few months I was back to my old speed and eventually progressed up to the low 60 wpm. I have now stayed at this speed for several years. I graduated college and currently work online so I am on my computer more than ever. This is the time to progress with my typing, typing quicker (100 vs 60 wpm) can help me complete my work nearly twice as fast or complete twice as much. Both sound like better options for the future (relating to typing work).

This time I am much more focused with my training to reach this goal, I know that casually taking typing tests won’t increase my speed by 40wpm, especially from an already average 60+ wpm. To reach 100 I need to analyze my weaknesses, deliberate practice, and consistency. Tracking my practice is important to stay motivated and see progress.

What am I doing to achieve 100wpm?

One of my weaknesses: Slow/weak left hand.
Improve my left hand. I always start with a warm up first. I begin my practice with a modified guitar warm up that I learned in the past, by resting my hands on the table I tap one finger, then the next down the line, then I tap twice, then up to 5 times down the line. I keep a calendar showing everyday that I’ve practiced and occasionally take practice tests to see my improvement. I always start out with practice before I begin my actual work. During my practice, I don’t worry about being fast, I focus on not making a mistake.

Current Metric

Currently my fastest wpm is 82, I completed this on Monkeytype.com taking a 30 second typing test (September 17, 2024). I am about halfway there from my starting point of 60wpm, it is mid September now and I began this challenge August 1st. I think it would be a great achievement to finish before the end of the year, but if I’m at 90 by this point I won’t be disappointed.

What tips can you give me to increase my typing speed?