First, let me remind you that regular people can learn to touch type at 40+ wpm on Qwerty keyboards in the span of a month in community college. With a bit of time, practice, and structure, you’ll learn an even better skill.
Each time you type a key, your body drops learning chemicals down some neural pathways to help you remember.
Typing in the CharaChorder happens much more in your brain than your hands. Think motor memory, not muscle memory. (Your hand muscles will need some conditioning though.)
It’s fine to make mistakes — we all make a ton — but if you’re chasing speed over everything else, slow down. Your body also drops those motor memory chemicals on your mistakes, too. Get too sloppy and you’ll learn to want to repeat the mistake. Then you’ll have to overwrite those pathways even thicker with the correct motion, so to speak.
<aside> 🧠 Neurons communicate by releasing chemical neurotransmitters into synapses, the junctions between neighboring neurons. These neurotransmitters are signals that activate receptors on the surface of a nearby neuron that then trigger a nerve impulse.
As repeated signaling occurs at a particular synapse, a process called long term potentiation (LTP) rapidly increases certain kinds of receptors on the surfaces of the receiving cell. Once the population of these AMPA receptors is increased, neurons are prepared to respond more efficiently to the next wave of incoming signals.
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So, balance speed and accuracy enough to build up those pathways carefully so that you don’t have to remake the bad ones too often.
You can also apply proven techniques from exercise, sports, and music training to help improve your training further:
When your body is fatigued, you start to make more mistakes, even small ones. So if you do 3 hours of straight typing practice, you’ll be getting less from the tail end because you’ll be going slower and having less precise movements. See the bit about chemicals and motor memory above.
It’s better to train until you’re fatigued (and maybe overtrain a little) and then take a break. This will help you preserve your form. 30 minutes every day is better than 210 minutes once a week. And if you want to practice for 2–3 hours a day like I do, break it into smaller chunks of 15–45 minutes (or whatever is appropriate for your level).
Try to give yourself at least 10 minutes of break between sessions, or even better if you can weave them throughout the day.
Bodybuilders don’t do the exact same motion over and over again to get “gains”. They do slight variations. Sometimes it’s a flat bench press. Sometimes it’s an incline press. Decline press. Fly. Bench press with dumbbells. Bench press with barbell.
Variations help both the brain and muscles work in a variety of situations. You don’t just type on a black screen with green flashy things telling you what to do. In the real world, you type everywhere. So switch it up.
Launchpad: Lexical. Launchpad: Amalgamate. Monkeytype. Keybr. ZType. Find ~3–4 different ways to practice.
Prove to that brain of yours that the motion needs to match the letter or chord, no matter what the context. It’ll form a stronger association.