The school session ended towards the end of July this year, and I set a goal to practice typing over the holiday. I'm not exactly sure why (probably because I thought it was cool to be able to type without looking at the keyboard), but around the middle of August, I started.
I had seen an Ali Abdaal video on how he learned to type fast (156 WPM), so I began from there. I remember watching the video and being so impressed at how effortlessly he could type with such accuracy. He gave many useful tips, like working on your posture, forcing yourself not to look at the keyboard, and finding a way to make it fun. At the end of the video, I felt I had enough knowledge to start practicing. So I did, but I quickly ran into a problem...
My finger placements were all wrong, which made the "not looking at the keyboard" part difficult. To address this, I downloaded Mavis Beacon and started using typing.com to practice with the correct finger placements. I did that for a few days until I felt somewhat comfortable. During that time, I also started using monkeytype.com to track my progress. That’s when things got serious...
I knew I wouldn't reach 100 WPM in a week, but I thought seeing progress would be relatively easy. I got a bit frustrated when it didn’t come as quickly as I had hoped. But I was addicted. I was taking tests every chance I got, constantly trying to optimize my typing techniques, and even got interested in keyboards. I reminded myself that I just needed to keep going and work through the frustration.
Yesterday marked 50 consecutive days of practice, and I wrote this post as a progress report. I started 1,280 tests and completed 1,232 tests in the last 50 days, averaging 25 tests per day and completing 24. My public stats are available on my monkeytype profile.
Here are some of the resources I used:
Mavis Beacon
This journey has been fun, and I'm going to keep practicing to get faster.
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