I still do that (tap things out in qwerty when not at a keyboard) constantly. I type well over 100wpm, and qwerty is very, very deep in my brain. On occasions I am significantly intoxicated (pretty rare for me) I can still type accurately at >50wpm even if my words are slurred.
There have been times I wanted to switch layouts but qwerty is just too far in there for too many decades.
I've been practicing touch typing for over 5 years now.
I seem to be capped at around ~65 WPM. I sometimes wonder if it will stay there, or will it improve.
Now I've tried to take the test again after roughly a year, out of curiosity, and I got around 75 several times.
Maybe it will improve very slowly past this level?
Do you perhaps remember how the improvement trend was with you?
I played Everquest and would be running from monsters while typing as a young teenager. So I’d have to type as fast as possible. I touch type around 120 wpm without ever being formally trained.
Maybe try something that forces you to type quickly like the game The Typing of the Dead or The Typing of the Dead 2? They’re silly games but might help since they add urgency to the typing.
You get better over time if you intentionally practice improvement. If you don't, 60-70wpm is a common threshold.
My gut feeling is that this is simply the speed range where the benefits of faster typing during composing quickly fall off. If you're thinking about what to say, you'll write a burst, think, write, think, change a bit, write some more- the limiting factor isn't really WPM.
Transcribing, of course, is another matter, but that is a specialized case.
Yes, you might be on something here. Tried to reflect back on it after reading your comment, and I think I "feel" content with my current writing speed.
Will try to feel less satisfied with my writing speed, and see if it will help. Thank you for taking time to share!
I play guitar, and I am certain that practicing the fine-motor sync skill of using both hands at once has helped my typing, and vice-versa.
For reference, my typing while transcribing rate is in the 100-110 range. My daily-use composition is likely half, simply because I spend most of my time composing in my head.
I will say that the big advantage comes from being completely comfortable touch-typing, without needing to look at the keyboard. Once you've achieved that, the mental load of typing fades in to the background, and you can spend more time considering content instead of the mechanics of creating it.
> You get better over time if you intentionally practice improvement.
Are there more effective techniques than just typing? I mean like measured techniques for identifying and improving problematic aspects of typing rather than just going at it repeatedly in the hopes that I'll improve overall?
Yes. Feedback from a professional typist, who watches and corrects your form as you type. When I was younger, my father had a secretary who helped me practice on an IBM Selectric, and it helped a tremendous amount compared to the time investment.
It’s also possible that your keyboard is slowing you down somewhat. I started using a super crappy keyboard a while ago with wobbly keycaps, poor actuation pressure, and excess key travel, and my typing speed & accuracy both dropped by over 5% just because the keyboard didn’t work well. It probably won’t take you from 75 to 100+, but if you are looking for something that might give you a modest improvement, you might look at the keyboard you’re using and see if you can find one that works better with your hands.
This makes me suspect it might be like instrument playing. A lot easier to learn while young.
I'm 29 right now and I've started practicing around 23-24. A bit too late for this kind of muscle memory I guess.
Plato said the prime of life doesn't even start until you're 25 and Schopenhauer said something similar (can't recall his exact number). You can still learn and grow a lot way later into life than most people think. If you really care, just try different techniques, measure/test yourself, and continue the cycle. If you can't find the motivation, maybe it's just actually not that important to you, and deep down you have greater interest in other things than learning how to type fast.
I don't have a good timeline for going from qwerty to dvorak to tell you (first change), but earlier this year I went from dvorak to workman and was back up to 100wpm at least after about two months. I was in the 140s with dvorak after a year and a half or so. My best with qwerty was 160. I recently hit 115 with workman. It doesn't cause the same right hand strain dvorak did, so I'll likely stick with it longer and hopefully hit my old speeds.
If you do change layouts, research them a bit first. I liked dvorak, but it used the right hand more than the left by a fair bit, like the opposite of qwerty. My right hand didn't deal with the strain as well as my left hand did in qwerty. Workman is about 50/50 left and right hand usage, and also avoids putting common letters in the middle two columns, which reduces how often stretching is needed.
Colemak seems a bit better than Dvorak on paper, but still has some flaws that lead to creation of a "mod DH" variant that moves D and H to a less straining spot since they're common letters.
Workman solves the same issue and is a lot more efficient than even Colemak, plus the 50/50 hand balance seems entirely unique to Workman. That balance was why I chose it over the Carpalx QGMLWB layout or the AI-generated Halmak layout, which are even more efficient in some cases than Workman. I have a friend who uses QGMLWB, but as far as I know, he doesn't get any pain in his hands. He also doesn't type quite as fast as I have, which may be related.
Lastly, I want to mention that I built an ergonomic keyboard and used it with dvorak for a couple months without my hand pain going away, which is why I bothered changing layouts again. The journey has been educational. I never used to care about stuff like the pinky being weak and overused. Now I have stuff like backspace and enter on thumb keys, I'm thinking about how much I have to stretch to certain keys, etc.
Some of these ergo keyboards take some keys off the right side compared to something like a 60%, but then you realize your right pinky was covering a huge amount of keys, and maybe it's worth having an extra inner column where you move the = sign to. I use a Pinky4 after using a Pok3r in the past, and it seemed annoying at first that the top row didn't fit the - and = right of the 0, but I prefer it now that I'm used to it. I've tweaked the key layout several times in QMK and it's been a lot of fun. So, I'd recommend both changing layouts and replacing your keyboard if you have any interest in this stuff.
There have been times I wanted to switch layouts but qwerty is just too far in there for too many decades.