Something I never thought I would ever find myself doing is thinking about keyboards. After two years of consistently improving my touch typing skills, I am now seeing the necessity to make certain adjustments and improvements to suit my needs.
Touch typing is basically typing on a keyboard with all of your fingers without having to look at the keyboard. I was motivated to learn in 2022, and I have managed to grow from 10 words per minute to hit an all-time high well above 80.
I know. Two years is indeed a long time, and that sounds pretty discouraging for someone who is willing to learn and would like to make significant progress quickly enough. But it only took me a few weeks to get the hang of it and a few months to be able to type without looking.
At the end of the day, it all depends on dedication and practice. I don't think there are up to seven days that I haven't practiced in the last two years. Practice for me is usually between one and ten minutes a day, and that made it much easier for me to grow with time by doing it regularly.
Over time, I became much faster at typing. I conveniently hit 70 words per minute (WPM) when I practice, and sometimes 80, but it has never been about speed for me. It's the efficiency and productivity I get.
Without a doubt, I am way faster with ten fingers than with just two—or nine, as I never use my left thumb. And with increased speed, I am able to save time and quickly relay the words in my head to my screen. And for the fact that I don't have to look at the keyboard as I type, it reduces that mental load to find where the alphabets and all are, also allowing me to multitask.
At some point, I couldn't always use my PC whenever I wanted, and so it could be low on battery and then have to use my phone instead. But that meant sticking with my thumbs alone to type, so I bought a wireless keyboard to solve that.
It works with my PC too, though. I just have a converter that I connected the dongle to for my phone. Now it's been a year since I have been using that keyboard, and now I feel the need to change it.
It works just fine. Everything is working like brand new. A few things I am tired of dealing with now are the need to replace the batteries regularly, the fact that the fact that I never use the number pad, which makes it too long, and the fact that the fact that it doesn't have a backlight.
The lack of backlight on this keyboard gets me frustrated some nights. I do not always need to look at the keyboard when I type, but in the times that I do, it is always a struggle to look at the keyboard in the dark.
What I often need to look at my keyboard for when typing is the use of special keys and symbols, and sometimes where the 'F' and 'J' keys are to position my fingers properly. Doing that in the dark can be frustrating.
I have found the keyboard I would like to replace this current one with, as it has solutions to some of these issues and some added features. It has a USB-C charging port, which makes me like it even more. And, yes, it is paired with a cool mouse.
The catch about buying this new keyboard now, however, is that in a couple of months or years, I will desire something better again.
Anyway, when I get this keyboard, I'll do a comparison between both keyboards, particularly on my typing speed. Until then, I'll just keep doing the same old...typing.
