I improved from 40 wpm to about 60 wpm in a week and a half, and now I've managed to switch to the DVORAK keyboard layout in an attempt to further increase my speed. I can't say if it will help you, but what I did was not worry too much about not looking at the keyboard. Instead, I focussed on keeping my hand position as consistent as possible. This allowed me to develop muscle memory. The other important thing I learned is not to get too frustrated. While I was practicing, there was a period when my accuracy suddenly dropped and I started doing much worse for no reason at all, my hand position was all messed up, etc. I just took a break and relaxed. And I just got over it.

Focus much more on accuracy (85% is not nearly enough) and make sure you type with a consistent hand position and allow yourself to properly develop your natural typing position. Not sure if this helped, but good luck on your typing journey!

Accuracy is what gets your speed up; and the reason is: backspacing kills time, and it kills flow. Slow right the hell down, focus on words - not letters - and focus on 100% accuracy. You won't get there but your speed will go up even so because you will have diminished those deadly backspaces.

Thanks! I think you may have a point about a consistent hand position - plus every time I move away to delete something it takes my hand too much time to reset back to normal. I'll try looking at my hands more and not worry about looking straight ahead and see what happens. Thanks again!

Thanks! I'll give the word thing a try - I think you mean typing in blocks rather than in single letters? Will see what I can do with that!

You can find Key hiders online as well. Try these exercises with the key covers and focus on home row typing. This will force you to use muscle memory. It is VERY frustrating at first, but when I started I was two finger typing around 20 wpm (I just hand wrote everything instead) and now am typing just around 65-70 WPM with 90+ accuracy.

As a musician you have a big advantage. You know what it takes to train your fingers to do things effortlessly.

Now apply those techniques to typing. Type slow. As slow as it takes to not make a mistake. Focus on proper form. One suggestion that helped me out is type on a rhythm, slowly and without skipping a beat. You might feel tempted to speed up but focus on form (like practicing scales and arpeggios). Focusing on accuracy will bring the speed.

Also don't race. You know what's comfortable for you to type accurately. You can sense it as you type. You'll be tempted to push yourself just a little bit, but it will come naturally. As you get comfortable at one speed, you'll gradually feel your fingers moving more nimbly for the next level.

Thanks! I'll keep trying but if you look at my profile I still seem to be stuck! Always seem to make mistakes even if I look at the keyboard - mastering Eb minor scale is much easier than learning to touch type!

Have you done the typing lessons? https://www.keyhero…

It seems like your problem is memory of the keyboard...work through the drills. Then practice to improve speed and accuracy.

Thanks for the reply. I've tried the lessons a few times but weirdly my typing speed on them sits stubbornly around the 20 wpm mark!

You know I went through a few of the lessons. They're not sequenced well. But they do have "custom" lessons that you can build for practice.

I can create a sequence that you can use for practice.

Basically you want to learn asdf jkl; and just intrinsically be able to rattle those keys off without effort. Then we can add in additional keys

Take your time, it took me years to get to where I am now! Also, one thing to improve first is accuracy. Try to get 100% accuracy every time you take a typing test, and then the speed will follow with it. Good luck!

Thanks for the offer! I think the sequencing isn't the problem, more my memory of where the keys are and especially returning to them after moving to hit the backspace key tends to disrupt my fingers sense of layout. I'll try alternating between the lessons and the tests (and maybe return to using a bit of Typesy to supplement everything.)

I'm going to assume that you're typing on the QWERTY key layout. And it doesn't sound like you're a 100% touch typer.

Before I give some advice, I am also a Piano player. While I was typing with the QWERTY layout (as I had been my whole life) I could get up to 80 WPM if I tried hard enough. Now I've made the full-time switch to the Colemak layout and averaging around the 55-60 WPM mark after only a few weeks of practice.

I suggest to, as others have mentioned, focus on accuracy and "muscle-memory" first. Learn to be able to type whatever you want with your eyes closed and know what keys you are actually pressing. If this is too difficult to achieve in the QWERTY layout I'd say give something like Dvorak or Colemak a try. They allow your hands to remain on the home-row of the keyboard as much as possible, and hence reduce hand straining and movement, and therefore improving accuracy overall. But you have to be committed to the new layout - if you keep switching back and forth you will probably type worse than before!

Also, take it slow. Everyone learns at different speeds as I'm sure you know. Once you get accuracy to the high 90's you can take small steps to push your speed - personally I've been trying to get an average of ~2-5 WPM per week more than the last. As soon as you see yourself improve even the slightest bit, take a break for a few hours. You'll find that if you let your mind catch up with your fingers you'll have a more pleasant learning experience, and you don't want to be put off because as soon as you beat your current WPM average, you likely won't beat it again in a short amount of time.

I'd also make sure to use more than just one site for practicing. I have been using a mix of the following: the typing cat, 10 fast fingers, typeracer, this site obviously and just messaging to friends on Facebook provided enough variety for me to get comfortable.

I hope anything I have said is somewhat helpful to you, and I wish you the best of luck on your typing journey!! :D

Thanks for the input. I was making some progress but have since changed my way of learning and decided not to look at the keyboard at all! It's taken me right back to my old statistics (and taken me ages to type this message!) but think that must be the way forward. Typesey is what I'm using to supplement my practise on this site and I think I'll just start writing my book (the whole reason I'm learning to touch type in the first place) to add additional practise. Thank you for your wishes on my typing journey - I've got a feeling I'll need it! ;)

I'm switching to Dvorak, too. My Qwerty speed was ~100 wpm on good days, and now I'm at 41-42 wpm. :(

dylantypes, I appreciate your question and your honest. I use to play early baroque music on a block flute, plus 20 years for classic guitar. And my the best - 50 wpm with 97% accuracy. The short answer is:

Your typing skills should be below average if yours hands could do much more than average people. Just because small neuron network works faster and more accurate. Brain is not to big for multi professionals. In any words: your fingers trained so much for playing on piano and new skills constantly dissolves when you play piano after type training...

The same situation when we change keyboard layouts...

That's a good point! But, like some skills, I thought parts of it might be transferable; mainly my dexterity of fingers such as the pinkie. I am starting to make progress - one of the best tips I found is to type the alphabet over and over. Forwards and backwards. Also, I'm alternating between looking at keyboard and not looking (which is why my scores are all over the place!) It's just taking a lot longer than I hoped it would have!

half an hour a day is good, but if you want to make progress faster than what you are making I would suggest you to practice more. The way I like to do it is to just have a chunk of time when I am not doing school work and just listen to a podcast or music and just type. I could do this for hours on end. You are at the stage where you do not have the muscle memory. Once you get to around the 60 I would suggest you to slow down. Which is counter intuitive but it will help your accuracy. and the more accurate the more time you save from pressing the backspace button.

@dylantypes

Here is a tip: Try typing at a speed you are comfortable with, focus on accuracy and do not pause. Overtime, this will become a habit and your speed will increase. I was stuck at 40 WPM for a long time, then I started working on accuracy. Now in 6 days, I have been able to boost my WPM to an average of 60-70 WPM. Also, I am a piano player too, typing is just like playing the piano, imagine you are playing the piano at a piano recital, you are playing a very hard piece that you didn't practice at all. Try not to mess up.

Hi there, thanks for the advice, sometimes it does get a little more than an hour but still no movement on speed or accuracy. My score goes up and down mainly based on how long or short the quote is (longer quotes definitely ruin my score!) As for slowing down at 60 - if only I could get up to that speed!

Thanks for the advice. I've been trying to approach the whole thing as a piece of music but think I need a new approach. I've tried typing to a slow metronome but the accuracy still doesn't improve. Think its the accuracy that's the factor holding me back at the moment.

Hope you're progressig steadily on your typing. Here's some additional tips to help you out:
Figure out which words or letter combinations are causing you to mistype and type slowly until you get them correct 100%.
Train your weaker fingers like the pinkies.

Hi there,
I figured out that the letter 'e' was one that I kept mistyping or just not typing at all. That and most of my right hand was inaccurate.
My speed is now much better - mainly thanks to working with Johnathon Stevens from Startouch. He made me think of typing in a different way (such as typing columns instead of rows) and a few other tips that got me past the block I was stuck at. I would recommend him to anyone who is stuck - his website is: http://www.startouc….
I'm still progressing slower than I'd like but I manage to get a new personal best once a week and I'm limiting my typing practice to 10 -15 minutes a day to avoid any kind of stress / burnout.

Hey, I have started touch typing before a month, and my current average speed is 35 wpm. Now I have the same issues as you. But since this thread is old, I think you would have improved. Any advice for me?

Try to focus on a rhythm per word for typing and use proper typing practice like using home row and using specific fingers for each key. Aim for accuracy not speed or acceleration for that matter, that comes with practice just like piano. Make sure to get 98-100 % accuracy for every quote even if you're slow. The key is to type with a specific goal in mind like building a muscle memory for each finger to press the right keys without looking at the keyboard. Type comfortably, don't look at the keyboard, make your fingers learn the positions of their specific keys. I learned typing in high school and I would always be the one to finish all the key exercises for building best practices on typing, those worked really well for me.

When I was first learning I spent probably 4 hours a day for a few days(I was fed up being so slow with college assignments and did a lot of note copying). It really is just practise, I wouldn't get too disheartened by how fast some people are able to learn. I improved quick enough if you looked at the days but the amount of time I spent was enourmous. You can try finding different typing sites to practise different things. 10fastkeys and keybr are good as well as this, keybr is particularly good for very punishing accuracy.

It can be very frustrating to go slow and practise accuracy but what I did was watched streams in the background. Nothing too heavy to distract me but just enough to entertain while my hands work. From about a year I improved from touch typing at 15wpm with something like 70% accuracy to now where I get 55-65wpm with +95% accuracy. You really can do it, it just takes so much time. Long stretchs work for me but consistant work might be the way to go for you.

Hi There! Sorry, just seeing this now. The best bit of advice I can give you is to stop worrying. I was not enjoying trying to increase my typing speed (it's still stuck at around 50wpm - generally 30wpm if I'm thinking about what I type) So I just typed what I wanted to - as in, what I was typing for. Since this post I now have over 40 books published on Amazon and making a bit of money every month from it.
So my practice has become actually typing rather than testing, if that makes sense? I know its not the answer you might be looking for (I certainly wasn't happy about giving up my 100wpm goal) but I've changed my thinking to-'it's better to have something to say/write slowly than be able to type really fast and have nothing to say.' Hope that helps in some way? :)

Super cool to see you keeping up with this forum. Oh, and it seems that from the comments I was reading above you've definitely managed to improve a great deal! I'm glad you're content with what speed you've managed to achieve, but don't give up on the 100WPM goal yet! You can do it!

-Kaiser

What helped me was forgetting about accuracy and focusing on speed. Eventually you hit the right keys and your accuracy naturally increases

You might want to change your capslock key to work as a backspace. That way, it is faster to fix mistakes.

Honestly what made my typing speed go up was league of legends all chat. I had to type fast so I could be toxic optimally.

I would say the best way to improve is to, at least at first, alternate between trying to go as fast as you can and as accurate as you can.

This allows you to really understand the difference between speed and accuracy. And once you, or at least your fingers can understand the difference, you can switch modes a lot easier. Eventually you can start to focus on accuracy and speed at the same time. Generally though you have to focus less on speed the better you get at distinguishing between speed and accuracy, because you'll improve both speed and accuracy if you split the work between different quotes.

Really later on you probably have to focus less on splitting the two because you have access to those skills. Then you just focus on accuracy.

The low accuracy and the resulting muscle memory from it is problematic. I'd recommend starting from scratch and don't do any practice on keyhero that is less than 100% accuracy. Go at 10 wpm if you need to. No, I don't mean pressing escape and restarting each time. Dvorak might make it easier to retrain, but I personally prefer qwerty.

I've practiced for 5 years consistently and have yet to break 100 regularly. My actual speed in real life is ~70. I completely retrained from scratch from being a 2-finger typer around 5 years ago and went through typing lessons such as Typesy to learn correct touch typing. I also recommend following good body posture including not hunching over and not resting or bending wrists.

If you want to try practicing your different key accuracies, you could use typing test.com and use the tricky keys function. This can help you practice on certain letters in sentences and hopefully can help you improve accuracy and speed in general for all keys.

I used to be like that. I did get better, but I didn't (and still don't) use any traditional typing methods. You probably shouldn't do that, but I do average about 65 wpm right now, and last year I averaged in the 40wpm range.
My way of typing is just to press the keys, and don't even worry about rows. I've memorized where the keys are on the keyboard, and I just press them.

Again, probably don't do this, because to get to this point I've had to keep typing (in general, not just tests) for a couple years now.

That's what I also wanted to advice. First get the basics right.

Hello Dylan! I was in a similar position as you one year ago, and now I type in the 100 wpm range! What I believe to be paramount to anything else when it comes to improving speed and accuracy is practicing your touch typing. Start by practicing ONLY the home row keys, with your left index finger on F and your right index finger on J. Once you are comfortable with that, slowly introduce other letters to your practice routine. There are websites that have practice modules that approach learning touch typing in a step-wise manner (I think typingclub.com is an example of what I'm talking about.) Practicing on quotes and trying to go as fast as possible when you aren't 100% comfortable with which finger is responsible for which key is not going to help you improve at all! Rome wasn't built in a day! Take it slow! Break those old habits! Other resources that helped me when trying to practice which finger hits what key are:

The typing lessons section of keyhero.com (THIS WEBSITE.) In the typing lessons you type randomly generated gibberish, an example being adsjkjl; fdsjka lfkdjs... you get the point! When doing these tests, your typing speed and accuracy will drop DRAMATICALLY, but It is important to take these tests slow and to not get frustrated. When you are doing this your are strengthening the muscle memory of each finger for each key Individually; it is unlike a normal typing test where you typing very common words with letter combinations that you are used to.

Keybr.com - This website is the same as the typing lessons in that your are still typing gibberish, but where it is different is that the gibberish isn't entirely random. The tests will have you typing words like dreate, troufle, crousely .... blah blah blah. The random words contains groups of letters that are most commonly found together. This will help you develop speed when you are typing those familiar words.

More important than anything else is: PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE! And perhaps if possible, practice more! I probably had such success with learning touch typing because I sit in front of a keyboard for 5+ hours a day, which might not be possible for you, but increasing the amount of time your spend practicing will only help your progress! Cheers! I will be checking your profile to see if you have made any significant progress!