Hi friends!

This week, I want to delve into a topic that many of us overlook: typing.

Often, people just wing it with whatever typing habits they’ve developed over time. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Mastering fast typing and knowing the keyboard by heart can make everything quicker, more productive, and fun.

It allows for better focus and significantly improves the quality of work.

Touch Typing

The first step in adopting the right system is touch typing. Learning touch typing is crucial. It enables you to type without looking at the keyboard, which speeds up your work and reduces errors. When I started I loved typingclub but there are lots of options available. I went through everything until I mastered every piece of the keyboard.

Practice Makes Perfect

To perfect my typing, I practice for 30 minutes once a week with MonkeyType. This helps me improve speed and accuracy. For Mac users, there’s a fantastic Raycast extension called Raytyping, inspired by MonkeyType, allowing you to practice typing conveniently from Raycast.

Typing Experience

Hardware plays a significant role in typing efficiency. I started with the HHKB (Happy Hacking Keyboard), which, in my experience, offers the best typing experience. The HHKB uses Topre switches, which enhance typing speed and accuracy, and feels fantastic on the fingers…

However, I’ve since transitioned to a split keyboard (ZSA Moonlander), which HHKB doesn’t make. A split keyboard offers several advantages:

1. Ergonomic Hand Posture: It promotes a more natural position for your hands, reducing strain.
2. RSI Prevention: Helps prevent repetitive strain injuries.
3. Customization: My Moonlander keyboard comes with a configuration system (mine is Oryx) that allows for another layer of keys, macros, and key combinations. This creates what I like to think of as “aliases for the keyboard,” making typing even faster.

Enhancing Speed Further

In addition to the hardware, software tools can significantly boost typing efficiency. A text expander is a game-changer. I use Espanso, but there are many options available. A text expander allows you to create shortcuts like “:email” or “:address,” which then expand to your full email address or home address, respectively.

Putting It All Together

By knowing typing by heart through touch typing, practicing regularly, gradually improving my hardware, and mastering keybindings, combined with a few software tricks like text expanders, my typing experience has become much smoother and faster. This system not only removes friction but also makes typing more fun and efficient.

Happy typing! And as always - feel free to reply to this email with feedback and questions!

Have a great weekend.