You may be wondering why to learn touch typing. Learning to type without looking at the keyboard takes time and effort, so you may think this investment may not return. Your time is precious, but learning touch typing is a lifetime investment that will pay off more the earlier you start practicing fast typing. Let us explain why it is a good idea to learn touch typing.
Do you realize important how touch typing is?
In today's world, many professions involves extensive use of a computer. If you are a lawyer, work in a call center, or are a programmer or a writer, you use a computer. Whether it is a laptop or the desktop computer, it has a keyboard - the best device to insert text invented so far. If you spend a significant amount of time in front of your computer, you should be able to type without looking at your keyboard. But why? It takes quite a long time to learn how to touch type. It takes effort and at the beginning you even type slower than if you didn't use any technique of typing. We will try to explain why it is important to learn touch typing.
Benefits of touch typing
As you improve your touch typing skills, you will enjoy the benefits it gives you.
You Save your time
If only you spend 3 hours per day typing and you double your typing speed, you can save, let's say 1 hour daily - this is 250 working hours per year; this gives you 31 whole days yearly.
Focus
Instead of constantly looking at the keys before one of them is pressed, you are focused on the text that you type. Your muscles are programmed to write correctly, so you do not need to think about the mechanics of typing.
Relax and your health
If you don't use every finger to type, or worse, use only your forefingers to press the keys, that is a huge waste of time. Moving your sight from the keyboard to your monitor and back again consumes much more time than just pressing one key. If you look at the keyboard while typing, you first need to focus on your hand, on your keyboard, and then on the monitor and check what you have just typed. Such practice takes a significant amount of energy which is wasted.
Touch typing doesn't have this problem because you don't need to focus on how you type. Your eyes are focused on your monitor all the time, so your head doesn't move. Your hands are not strained and your fingers move in a natural way.
Better posture
Touch typing forces a correct position of the spine. You do not duck looking at the keyboard. Your sight is directed on the monitor - ahead, so the neck is not bent down. To keep your hands better aligned, you should be inclined from the keyboard, so the whole body strives to be arranged in the most optimal way for fast typing.
Accuracy
Touch typing improves typing accuracy. It would seem that if you do not think about how you type, then you may make typos, but your muscles are programmed to type correctly. That is why it is so important to focus on accuracy during early learning, rather than on the speed of typing. Try to type with 100% accuracy. Correct your typos, then with time, you will really type much faster.
Increased productivity
Touch typing leads to a reduction in the amount of time spent on a given task that requires typing with your keyboard. You can do more work because you have more time.
Faster typos correction
Touch typing allows you to quickly correct mistakes in your typing. Typos that were made during looking at the keyboard, not at the typed text on your monitor are harder to see. It happens that people who are typing and looking at the keyboard enter some text, then they notice on the screen that nothing has been entered. Touch typing makes your attention focused on what has already been typed, so you can immediately see where the typing error was made.
Unleash the potential of your brain
Touch typing allows concentrating on the typing content, not the typing process itself. It is similar to riding a bike or driving a car. You do not focus on all aspects of driving - you are not looking at gear shift when you want to change gears, or calculating how many degrees to turn the steering wheel when you wish to turn: it's all happening automatically. It's the same with touch typing - you type, and you are not wondering where a given keyboard key is. Your muscles know that. This is the so-called muscle memory, which memorizes the correct movements of the hands and fingers.
Professionalism
Touch typing is something you can boast of before your prospective employee in your CV. Typing without looking at the keyboard is a skill that is respected by others. Even good professionals who type slowly can appreciate the touch typing skill. This is unfortunately a skill that fades a bit. Nowadays many people use two thumbs when typing on the keyboards of their smartphones, and when they come to the keyboard they use two index fingers - that looks very unprofessional.
Treat yourself seriously
If you consider yourself a professional in some field, but you sit hunched over and tapping two fingers on the keyboard, your professionalism may be questionable. If you've spent so much time studying a particular area of interest and haven't bothered to learn touch typing, something's wrong here! You may not think about it, but subconsciously, self-esteem is lowered as you feel that your typing slows your work or your learning process. Faster and correct typing increases self-esteem, and this should not be underestimated.
Conclusion
Touch typing is much more efficient than typing and looking at the keyboard. You cannot have any doubts about it. The only obstacle that is in touch typing is the cost of the time and effort that one has to take to learn to touch type. The truth is that the earlier your start touch typing, the more benefits it will give you throughout your studies, professional career, and your entire life.