Typing Faster Working Faster
Your words per minute (WPM) effects how much you can do on a computer. Also, do you use keyboard shortcuts effectively?
These are the fundamentals, it’s dribbling practice in basketball or posture in weightlifting. They’re not going to score you points directly, but practicing these is foundational to your success.
If you’re already on board and want to work on it there are any number of options. A few I like are https://www.typing.com/ for learning the basics of touch typing, https://www.keybr.com/ for practice and skill building, then finally https://monkeytype.com/ for speed tracking and practice.
To figure out your approximate starting WPM go to monkey type and do a few 30 second timed tests. See where you’re averaging. Aim for 100 WMP no matter where you’re starting from. Even if you’re at like 30 and you can get to 50 that’s amazing, you’ll notice a huge difference in your ability to communicate digitally.
For keyboard shortcuts, I’d highly recommend spending some time with whatever programs, software, tools, operating systems you use most often and finding a list of keyboard shortcuts for the tasks you commonly do.
If you’re using Figma for example there’s a little question mark symbol in the bottom right that has an option to bring up a keyboard shortcut tray. Or, if you want to get right into it hit ⌃ ⇧ ? a.k.a Ctrl Shift ? on Mac or Windows to open up the tray.
Figma does a great job with this little interface, it even shows you what keyboard shortcuts you’ve used before so you can see the seldom used ones you can start incorporating into your flow.
Anything you can do with your hands on your keyboard vs moving to use your mouse and if you can user your keyboard without looking...you’re going to save so much time that could be spent making things. If you’re using a computer all day and you don’t do this you’re a musician that has to look up what each note on the piano is each time they need to find a new one.
If you’re somehow against this idea entirely c’mon at worst it can’t hurt to improve these skills and knowledge even incrementally. And at best you’ll write emails faster. No more hunt and peck for you my friend.