(tranquil ambient music) - Hey friends,
welcome back to the channel.
If you're new here, my name is Ali,
and I'm a doctor based in the UK.
And in this video,
we're talking about a topic very close to my heart,
which is how to type faster.
Now having a ridiculously fast typing speed
is one of my superpowers in life.
And I think anyone can become at least twice as productive
if you just improve your typing speed.
And so in this video, we're gonna talk
about the benefits of improving your typing speed.
And then I'm gonna go over eight actionable practical tips
on how you can personally improve your typing speed
so that you can become a productivity grease monkey.
In case you're wondering,
I hit around 155 words per minute on a good day.
And if I'm feeling particularly sluggish,
I will be hovering around the 140 words per minute mark.
For context, the average typing speed
is around 45 words per minute.
And if you're watching this video,
you're probably a nerd like me,
so yours are probably significantly higher.
And according to Google,
you need to be at around 80 words per minute
to qualify as a professional typist, whatever that means.
Regardless
of whether you wanna be a professional typist or not,
I think there's some very good reasons
to improve our typing speed,
to try and get it as high as possible.
The first and most important one
is that it just really impresses people.
Like when people see me typing at work,
I work as a doctor in case you didn't know.
The single biggest compliment I've ever gotten
through my two years of being a doctor,
is that, wow, you type really fast.
Maybe that's not the kind
of compliment I want when I'm a doctor,
but still it's nice to hear.
And everyone is always so impressed.
Like, oh my God, where did you learn to type?
And I'm just like, well, you know, I misspent youth
and they're always like, oh hahaha, very funny, Ali.
Secondly, everything in life
is based on a computer these days.
If you can increase the speed
at which you interact with a computer,
if you can get the computer to respond to you
kind of as close to you thinking that thing as possible,
then you just like
so much more productive in front of a computer.
It's not just for typing heavy things,
like typing essays and whatever you do for work,
it's also just in general
in terms of interacting with the web browser
and going on websites and sending messages to friends,
all of that stuff becomes quicker and therefore
we become more productive when we can type faster.
And thirdly, to be honest for me,
the closer my typing speed gets to my thinking speed,
the more creative I think I become
because when you're writing something,
like whether it's a first draught for a blog post
or a project or an essay, or even a script for a video,
when you're writing something, the first draught
you'd always be just kind of a brain dump
without really stopping to think about it too much.
And so when I'm planning videos
or writing blog posts or email newsletters, link below
if you wanna subscribe to my weekly email newsletter
when I'm typing out the first draught,
I can almost type at the rate that I think
and therefore I just get stuff onto a page so much quicker.
And a lot of people ask that,
Ali, how do you have time to do all of these things?
YouTube channel, blog, newsletter, podcast?
How do you have time to do all this stuff
while you're working as a doctor?
And my answer is, well,
I'm taking a break from medicine right now.
And apart from all the general productivity advice
that I've given out on this channel in the past,
I think just being able to type super fast
makes such a big difference to everything
because it just makes life so much better.
So that's why we should be improving on typing speed.
I've actively worked to improve mine
and it's had a big knock on effect on my life
and hopefully one day it will help me attract a mate.
Let's now go over eight ways,
eight practical actionable ways
that you can improve your typing speed.
All right, so step one involves
learning some keyboard shortcuts for fixing mistakes.
And if you don't know these already,
these are an absolute game changer.
So I'm gonna type some stuff
and I'll show you how I fix a mistake.
(types on keyboard)
Okay, I've typed in, "Somewhere over the rainbow wau up."
So I wanna write "way up".
Now the old school way of fixing this mistake is going
back, back, back, back.
Y, space.
You know, it's like using backspace multiple times.
But a general tip for improving your typing
is that whenever you find yourself using backspace
more than twice, there's probably a better way of doing it.
And so, if I take that typo back,
what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use option and backspace.
And what that does is that deletes an entire word.
Option, backspace to delete an entire word.
And I will show you
on a more legit keyboard what that looks like.
So if I type the type again "wau up".
I'm sure this is aligned.
I'm just hitting option
and backspace to delete the entire word.
And this is absolutely revolutionary.
If instead you're one of those heathens that uses windows,
then don't worry, you can also do this on windows.
You press control and backspace and on Windows that works
and that deletes a whole word.
So that just changes the game completely
because now you're not (types frantically)
pressing backspace multiple times to delete mistakes,
you're doing option + backspace or control + backspace
and then you're more efficiently fixing mistakes
as you go along.
The other really useful keyboard short cut
which is on Mac, but not on Windows
is Cmd + backspace to delete an entire line.
This is helpful in fewer circumstances
than being able to do to delete individual words,
but that's also an important one to know.
All right, tip number two for improving your typing speed
is by discovering a website called 10fastfingers.com.
And semi-regularly doing typing tests on here.
I discovered this website when I was, I think, 13 years old.
I am 26 now.
So basically half a lifetime ago, I discovered this website.
And I think at the time,
my speed when I was in like the eighth grade
was about 70 words per minute, maybe 80,
it was between 70 and 80 words per minute,
'cause I was still a nerd at that point.
But just a few times a month,
I'll just hop onto 10fastfingers and do some practise,
do one of these typing speed tests.
And just over time, my typing speed
has just improved exponentially, or not exponentially,
has improved linearly based on just practising the tests.
So let's do one now and I'll show you in real time
and then we'll speed up the rest of it
so you don't have to sit through all of it.
Okay, clearly I'm not gonna get above 145 in this session.
I feel like it's 'cause I'm quite hot right now.
But anyway, this is how 10fastfingers works.
But yeah, a few months ago, a friend of mine, Angus
was on about 65 words per minute.
And then just for once a week for about 10 minutes,
he's just been practising on 10fastfingers
and his typing speed now is up to round about 95.
So that's about a 50% increase
by practising 10 minutes here and there
for the last few months.
So it's very doable to get quite quick at typing
when you're doing these tests somewhat regularly.
Tip number three is another website called Keybr
which is like a typing lesson type website.
I don't spend a lot of time on this personally.
I mostly prefer to use 10fastfingers,
but this is quite nice,
it sort of trains your typing speed
based on what your own weaknesses are.
So let's switch keyboards back.
What it's doing, if we look over here, it says,
"Lessons key set" and it select a few keys.
And current key is E.
And so I'll just do a little bit of it first
and then I'll show you how it works.
(types on keyboard)
So over there, my speed was a 104.2.
Made one error, this was my score, whatever,
but the point is, is that it's worked out,
essentially, it was just testing me on E, N, I, T, R, L.
Now it's gonna test me on S and a few other keys
and we'll see how I do on that.
So.
So you saw over here that my speed was 75,
gain was minus 26.
And so what it's doing is that as I'm typing,
it's figuring out which specific
letters on the keyboard I'm struggling with,
and then it's gonna train me on those more often.
And so this is a little bit frustrating
because a lot of the words that it's making you type out
aren't actually real words.
(types frantically)
And that's why I prefer 10fastfingers
for just general practise
and also testing myself because it's actual words.
And I think 10fastfingers
is based on like the 300 most common words
in the English language or something like that.
So more like a real world test
and practise of typing speed.
But this website keybr.com
is good for getting those little bits
that are a little bit more pesky.
So I occasionally have a little dabble with this.
Tip four is that if we wanna improve our typing speed
and general digital productivity,
productivity in front of computer,
we wanna move away from using the mouse
to using the keyboard for absolutely everything.
So on Mac, the app that I like to use for this is Alfred,
which is sort of a replacement to Spotlight.
And so I don't even show my doc,
I like never ever look at my doc to open up apps.
Instead, if I wanna open an app,
I'll use Alfred + command + space bar
and I'll just type in the app.
So if I want a Safari, if I want Spotify,
I'll just go command, space bar S-p-o-t, enter,
Spotify comes up, command, space bar, "bear",
you know, and so on.
So like, I will never ever use this screen to select apps.
I will almost never use the mouse
to drag over to the dock to click it.
And A, that just makes me so much more productive
when I'm on a computer,
because now I can think of doing something
and then it immediately happens with the app,
Alfred, I can also search for files
and Spotlight does some of this.
If I wanna do a Google Search or an Amazon Search,
I'll just type it in.
So let's see,
what's the, so if I type in "average typing speed".
The nice thing about Alfred which Spotlight doesn't do
crucially is that whatever you type in, if it's not an app
or a search term for like a file or something,
it will automatically search Google for it.
And so you can Google things very quickly.
If I wanna search for something on Amazon,
I will type in "ama and then type in, I dunno,
"wheel of time".
And it'll recognise I'm trying to search Amazon.
And so these day to day things that I'm doing,
I'm doing a lot quicker because of Alfred,
but alongside my own typing speed is improving
because now I'm sort of interacting with the keyboard
for everything I'm doing on a computer,
rather than using a mouse to click.
And so even if I'm using any kind of new app,
anytime I find myself having to use the mouse,
I think in my head, okay, this is sub optimal
and I will Google what the keyboard shortcuts are
for that particular app,
so that I can kind of learn the keyboard shortcuts as I go.
And I think switching to this keyboard first mentality
which I did in around about 2012, 2013,
that's really helped improve my typing speed,
'cause now we're just kind of keyboard warrior a lot more
than being a mouse warrior.
Tip five is as you're improving your typing speed,
you basically never ever want to look at the keyboard.
You know, the whole point of touch typing
is that you are able to (typing on keyboard)
type whatever you want without looking at the keyboard.
And I think it's very tempting
to look at the keyboard initially, but like,
even if you're really slow,
I think the way to train the muscle is by going slower,
but not looking at the keyboard
unless for example, you make a mistake
and you really have to, because what we're training is,
we're not really training our ability
to see where the keys are and hit them,
we're training our ability to not see where the keys are
and hit them.
And so like in the past, when my typing speed was slower,
I used to give myself the ability
to look at the keyboard when I needed to,
but now I kind of force myself,
no, I'm not allowed to look at the keyboard
and I will always try and kind of correct mistakes
even without looking at the keyboard
because correcting mistakes
is an important part of improving our own typing speed.
All right, tip number six
is that we always wanna be returning
our fingers to the resting position of A, S, D, F, J, K, L,
semicolon.
And this is very easy to do
because on most key, basically all keyboards,
the F and the J keys
are gonna have these little bits on them.
And so your index fingers of the left and right hand
can always return to this position.
And I think this is just a, this generally,
it's kind of like when you're playing a piano,
you wanna return to the rest position.
Like this is the rest position.
And it's easy enough to get here
by feeling for these little indentations
on the F and the J key from
wherever you are on the keyboard.
Tip number seven is a little bit weird
and that is try to make noise.
So I'm not sure how legit this advice is
in terms of like a professional typist.
But to be honest, I've always found that,
when I'm typing loudly, I tend to type faster.
And if it's like a quiet room or a lecture or something
and I'm trying not to make noise,
then I end up typing a lot slower.
And I dunno if this has something to do with the noise
but I think just the mentality of,
(typing on keyboard)
I'm typing as loudly as I can in a way.
(chuckles)
I don't know, at least for me,
it helps me get into the mindset
of sort of like,
(exhales rhythmically) typing typing harder.
It ends up being a lot louder
on a mechanical keyboard like this,
but even on a sort of less loud keyboard,
I tend to hit the keys with quite a lot of force.
Possibly I'm being a bit inefficient because in theory,
any excess force is wasted force, but I find that,
(types on keyboard)
yeah, when I'm trying to be loud,
my typing speed just gets better.
So maybe that's another tip
that you guys can experiment with.
And finally, we always wanna be treating
improving our typing speed kind of like game,
and we always wanna be improving.
Like for me,
I know the next stage of my improvement as a typist'
cause I'm trying to hit 200, I think 200 words per minute
would be a good thing to aim for.
I think the next stage for me
is to use my left pinky more often,
'cause with the ASDF method, what you're supposed to do
is you're supposed to use your pinky to hit the A key,
the Q key, the one, two and shift.
But really the only thing I use my pinky for
is to hit the shift key and I will use my left ring finger
for hitting, you know, Q, A, Z, one, two.
So.
Yeah, basically, I reserve my pinky just for shift,
and that's probably suboptimal,
like people say you should use your pinky more often.
So even though my typing speed is quite high,
sort of 130s to 140s in this session, 150s on a good day,
I'm still trying to improve.
And I kind of treat it as a bit of a game.
And I think that's one of the most important things,
like it's a skill that can be improved
and my life has significantly improved
since I developed the ability to type fast.
And so, yeah, I would just encourage you to
treat it like a game,
treat it like a constant thingy of improvement
and then you too will type
like a productivity grease monkey.
And finally tip number nine, little bonus tip for you guys,
is that, well why are we trying to type faster?
Usually because,
well I mean, apart from trying to attract a spouse,
we're typing faster because we want to be more productive.
But as I said at the start of the video,
being more productive
isn't just about how fast you can kind of like,
(exhales rhythmically) bash the keys on a keyboard,
it's also about a load of other things.
The productivity equation, as I like to call it
is productivity equals useful output
divided by time multiplied by the fun factor.
And if you wanna learn more
about my own tapes of productivity,
you should definitely check out my productivity
Skillshare class,
which is all about the fundamentals of productivity,
and in that we talk about the equation,
we talk about a mental model of the pilot,
the plane and the engineer,
which is how I like to think about productivity.
And we talk about the three myths,
the three powers and the three laws of productivity.
I think so far about 10,000 people have taken that class
and it's got like amazing reviews.
If you wanna check out that class for free,
you should hit the link below
to get a free two month trial of Skillshare
who are kindly sponsoring this video.
To be honest,
I plug Skillshare even when they don't sponsor my videos
because I have four classes on Skillshare right now,
we've got a productivity class, a study for exams class,
a class on how to use Anki,
which is an amazing flashcard app
and a class on how to edit videos exactly like this one.
So by signing up to a two month free trial of Skillshare,
you can watch hours and hours and hours
of the rest of my content, if that's what you want.
And you should definitely check out my productivity class.
My mate, Thomas Frank as another productivity class
which is really good,
'cause ultimately improving our typing
is more about trying to make ourselves more productive
than just the mechanical task of improving our typing.
On top of that, Skillshare has 1000s and 1000s of classes
on all sorts of topics from creativity to business,
to entrepreneurship, like literally so much stuff.
And it's all available for less than $10 a month
for the annual premium subscription.
Even though they sponsor my videos,
even though I'm a Skillshare teacher,
I still pay the $10 a month every month to Skillshare.
And it's one of the most worthwhile things
that I spend any amount of money on.
And so definitely hit the link in the video description
to get a two month free trial of Skillshare,
and thanks Skillshare for sponsoring this video.
If you like this video and you wanna be more productive,
then here is a very short playlist
of some of my best productivity themed videos.
Thank you so much for watching
and I'll see you in the next one,
(tranquil ambient music) bye bye.