Benefits of Touch Typing

Introduction

I could write an entire book about the benefits of learning touch typing. Seriously. There are way too many to cover in one article, so I'm going to focus on the ones that personally changed my life.

Flow State

For me, this was the biggest benefit of learning touch typing. I honestly cannot emphasize this enough - this is why I quit my job at Amazon as a software engineer and built this app. I want to build the most effective app to help people quickly learn typing.

I learned touch typing in about 2020. It took a few months and eventually something clicked - I stopped thinking about the keyboard altogether. I was never looking down. Nowadays, when I'm writing out a long message, blog post or an email, I will sometimes zone out and look into the distance while typing away - making no mistakes. I can close my eyes and type.

There is something incredibly satisfying about being competent with a skill. This is especially the case with typing. When you learn touch typing, typing and writing becomes a natural stream of consciousness. The barrier between your thoughts and what's on the screen is removed. Your thoughts just flow onto the page.

This changed everything for me personally. Before I would dread responding to emails when I had to write a long message. I would dread having to type out a lot of code for changes. I would almost fear writing blog posts and social media posts - especially the longer ones.

Now, I actually look forward to writing. I enjoy it. I can type out my thoughts as they come to me. I often start by writing in a separate "brain dump" file as I call it where I just type every sentence that comes to mind about the topic, without editing or connecting them. Being able to type quickly makes these iterations so much faster.

If you're writing a lot for school, for work, for your hobby, or even if you just type online a lot, touch typing will make a huge difference. Being in the flow state is one of the best feelings - the words just flow.

Productivity with AI

Beyond personal writing, touch typing becomes especially valuable when working with modern AI tools.

With the rise of AI tool usage in schools and work, almost everyone is typing some prompt into an AI text box. When using AI tools, the more details you provide in your prompts, the better the results. This means with each prompt, the more info you type in, the better the answer will be. Dictation tools are getting better. However, they are still not precise and often you're unable to use them (in a classroom, in a library, in an office space).

With touch typing, you can become a lot more efficient with typing. Therefore, using AI tools will become a lot easier and more efficient. You will be much more quickly able to type out detailed prompts, and get the results you need.

From my experience, the more I type and the more info I provide when working with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc., the better the results have been. I often even find myself typing out long prompts in separate files (usually markdown or yaml files) and then copy-pasting or uploading the files to the AI

I honestly cannot imagine how much AI benefits people are missing out on by not being able to type quickly and efficiently.

Often people may argue that typing speed is not the bottleneck, and sometimes I agree with this. But when it comes to AI, there's no argument. If I type 120wpm on average and you type 40wpm on average, I can type out 3x the amount of info in the same amount of time. My prompts, and so my results, will be faster and better.

Confidence

Another major benefit is the confidence you gain in professional and social situations.

Have you ever had to screen share and someone in a meeting asked you to write something down, and you get nervous, fumbling around the keyboard, making misclicks, etc.? I have. I dreaded it - I didn't realize until later that this was the main reason behind my fear of sharing my screen (and pair programming).

When you learn to type, you will feel confident when you have to type in front of others. You will quickly be able to jot down meeting notes or write something out when you need to. No more fear, no more dread of appearing foolish looking for the keys and making misclicks. This confidence extends to presentations, collaborative work sessions, and any situation where others can see your screen.

Reduced Strain

The physical benefits of touch typing are often overlooked but equally important.

With touch typing, you can keep your eyes on the screen. Before I learned touch typing, I would frequently look down when typing. This was especially the case with hard to reach symbols; I would literally sometimes search for a particular symbol on the keyboard for a second or two before finding it. This means that each time I needed to input a dollar symbol or a percent symbol, I would look down, which causes you to move your neck in an uncomfortable position, moving your eyes from the screen to the keyboard. Your eyes have to adjust to a different focal length, and different brightness level. This causes strain on the eyes and neck. With touch typing, you can keep your eyes on the screen

Before touch typing, I would frequently experience headaches and neck pain after a long day of work. It was only after a colleague saw me typing and said, "You look up and down a lot when you type, does your neck/eyes hurt?" that I realized this could be the issue.

He was a touch typist, I wasn't. I didn't even realize that this could have been the cause. I work as a programmer and in general, outside of code, I type a lot in Slack messages, emails, etc.

After a few months of learning to touch type, I noticed that the pain went away. I stopped getting headaches. I strongly encourage you to try learning touch typing if you experience any of these during work:

• headaches (constantly switching back and forth between screen and keyboard; eyes having to re-focus every few seconds, etc.)
• neck pain
• shoulder pain
• eye strain

It is definitely not a cure-all solution. When it comes to health and ergonomics there could be many factors. This is just personal anecdotal advice. For me, touch typing helped - no more eye strain, no more headaches, no more neck or pain.

With hand pain in particular, the keyboard you use matters as well - this was the biggest factor for me. I got an ergonomic one (Kinesis Advanced 2) and it made a world of difference.

Faster Output

This is simple math. If you type 40wpm and I type 120wpm, in the same amount of time, I can type out 3x the amount of info. The simple raw throughput of text that I put on the digital landscape is faster. You will be able to type out long emails fast, long messages on Slack, your essays for school, your prompts to AI tools, etc.

I used to type on average about 30wpm before I learned touch typing. Now I type on average 100-120wpm depending on what I'm typing. This is a 2x-3x increase in throughput.

We can make the argument that this will save you time, etc. It will, absolutely. However, this isn't the main argument. The main argument is that you will become more competitive with writing online. You will produce content faster.

The Wow Factor

This one is a small cherry on top. When you learn touch typing, people will be impressed by your skill.

This is more of a personal anecdote. I used to be embarrassed about my typing speed. I would often avoid situations where I had to type in front of others. I used to see people who type fast and be impressed and intimidated. Thinking "Wow, they must be so smart, they can type so fast". I thought you had to be special - that it required a lot of dexterity and most people can't reach it. But now that I'm on the other side of 100wpm, I can tell you that anyone can learn this.

Nowadays I often get compliments and comments on my typing speed, when I'm screen sharing, etc.

Career Benefits

As a knowledge worker, you will use your keyboard daily; non-stop for hours at a time.

I'll share a short personal story of my job hunting experience. This is how I landed internships and all my jobs and how typing helped.

I would write out every single cover letter. For every single application, I would write out all the answers to the questions posted in the job application like "Why do you want to work here?", "Why do you want to work at this company?", "Tell us about a time when you faced a challenge and how you overcame it", etc.

Most of them required about 100-500 word answers. Typing at 100wpm avg., this was a breeze and would only take a couple of minutes. I actually looked forward to it I would genuinely try to answer these questions in the cover letter and application. I would also type out shorter messages to recruiters on LinkedIn or in the email if I could find it. All of this was possible because I could type quickly. But more importantly, I felt that I had enough capacity and energy to do all this because I could type fast. What I mean is that if I typed slowly, I honestly would think about this and feel way too lazy. And as a result, miss out on applications and opportunities.

Learn to type - your career will benefit.

Next Steps

The fact that you've read this article and read it all the way here means you're considering learning touch typing. You're probably evaluating whether it's worth it and I want to assure you that it definitely is!

If you're curious, you can start with our free features by typing various text snippets or even trying a few drills in our practice mode. If you're a programmer, you might consider our code typing practice.

And if you want to learn touch typing and improve as quickly as possible, try out personalized AI typing practice (with modes like SmartPractice and TargetPractice) where we analyze your weak points as you type and generate text that targets these areas.

If you have any questions, you can also reach out to me personally - I'm always happy to talk about typing, keyboards, etc.