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Do you spend a great deal of your time at work by a com­put­er? Does your work descrip­tion include a great deal of e‑mailing, phras­ing and for­mu­lat­ing things, typ­ing things out and so on?

If you want to spend your time on more impor­tant mat­ters, you could get rid of some to-do-tasks by del­e­gat­ing them to some­one else, or you could just rearrange your pri­or­i­ties and rid your­self of them that way.

Either way you will have few­er tasks to do than you had to begin with. 

But per­haps you still want to com­plete the same amount of tasks, only faster. 

Leave the ​“hunt and peck”-system behind

If you per­form many of your to-do-tasks by typ­ing on your com­put­er, you could man­age more tasks in less time by sim­ply typ­ing faster, mechan­i­cal­ly speaking.

How? Believe it or not, it is pos­si­ble to learn. 

The method is called ​“touch typ­ing” and is said to have been invent­ed in 1888. If you also took the class ​“Typ­ing” in High School dur­ing the 80s’ (like I did), this is the method you would have learned. The class­es with fast-typ­ing exer­cis­es on dou­ble sheets with car­bon-papers in between the sheets might not have been very inspir­ing, but things have changed and today there are many more acces­si­ble and fun ways to learn the same techniques. 

Is increased speed real­ly an end in itself?

But why spend time on learn­ing how to type faster? Is there real­ly any point to doing so?

Well, if you use the ​“touch typing”-technique you will be able to type what you want to type, only faster. Writ­ing will sim­ply become less of an inconvenience.

Anoth­er pos­i­tive con­se­quence of using this tech­nique is that it will be eas­i­er to put the text you have in your mind on paper since you will not have to wait for your fin­gers to catch up with your line of thought. With a bit of prac­tice, ​“touch typ­ing” will even­tu­al­ly help you write almost as fast as you think.

If typ­ing faster will make it more like­ly that you make note of your ideas on the com­put­er, write down thoughts or the infor­ma­tion from that sales-call you had, to a greater extent than you pre­vi­ous­ly have, you will gain time since it will now be eas­i­er find what you pre­vi­ous­ly wrote on a mat­ter since dig­i­tal doc­u­men­ta­tion is more con­ve­nient to search through than ana­log material. 

Learn with ease

Per­son­al­ly, I get bored and rest­less in a minute if I have to learn some­thing new by just prac­tic­ing. I need either to do some­thing fun while learn­ing or prac­tice in a fun way in order to bare with myself through the learn­ing process. 

That is why I will now pro­vide you with sug­ges­tions of two tools which aid you in learn­ing to type faster and does so in fun ways. 

Do this

1. First you need to learn the actu­al ​“touch- typing”-method.
    
   There is an exces­sive selec­tion of free online-ser­vices with lessons and exer­cis­es. My per­son­al favorite is Typ­ing. Typ­ing­web sup­plies every­thing from begin­ner lessons to exer­cis­es for the more advanced typ­ist. The web­page is financed by com­mer­cials, but that does not reduce its util­i­ty and qual­i­ty, if you ask me. If you wish to track your progress in typ­ing faster, you can sign up for a free account, and if not, you just use the fea­tures as a ​“guest”.


2. Once you have learned ​“touch typ­ing” (or while you are learn­ing), it is time to increase your speed. Make sure to make it fun and playful!
   
   At Type­r­ac­er you com­pete with oth­ers in a game sim­i­lar to the Horse Rac­ing game you find at a car­ni­val. You are all giv­en the same text and at a giv­en sig­nal you go ahead and type. Who­ev­er is first to fin­ish and with the least amount of mis­takes, wins. 
   
   If you are like me, you will want to play ​“just one more time”. And while doing so you will improve your ​“touch typ­ing” skills.

Being faster frees up more time

If you improve your typ­ing-speed, all your at-the-com­put­er-tasks will be com­plet­ed faster and eas­i­er. You will have more time and ener­gy to spend on the tasks you tend not to have time for.

You will also have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to enjoy some healthy com­pe­ti­tion and enjoy­ment in your work-day, as well as enjoy your progress in learn­ing some­thing new. 

How do you improve yourself?

What is your best way to learn some­thing new which you might need to know, in a fun way? Write a com­ment to let the Done!-readers in on your best tips.