Three Reasons You REALLY Should Learn to Type

Learning how to type properly may not be your top priority—but maybe it should be.

According to a study by technology market research firm The Radicati Group, the average number of emails sent and received per person per day will rise from 122 in 2015 to 126 in 2019.

Beyond that,  think of all of the instant messages you send, documents you compose and searches you perform on a daily basis.

The faster you can type, the faster you can complete all of these tasks—and the more productive you can be.

Here are three reasons you really should learn to type. (And just the type of training you need.)

1. Less time

Being a productive typist is all about reducing milliseconds here and there, which add up to seconds, minutes, hours, and even days over time.

If you employ “hunt-and-peck” typing, you’re probably using two fingers on each hand to hit all of the keys on the keyboard. This means more work for those index fingers and more ground for them to cover; hunt-and-peck typing is inefficient.

Using your index fingers to strike keys such as the outlying Q and P keys takes far more time than it should. Yes, we’re talking about milliseconds here but they add up!

When you first start learning to type properly, you may actually be typing more slowly than you did as a hunt-and-peck typist; it takes some time to train your fingers (especially the pinky and ring fingers) with new movements. But once those fingers have learned their place, you’ll be striking those outlying keys much faster than you did before.

2. Greater focus

Let’s face it: Half of hunt-and-peck typing is just that: hunting for keys. Hunting takes more time, which results in slower typing, which results in less productivity.

It also takes your eyes off the computer screen; then you need to refocus your eyes back on the computer screen once you’ve found the key you’re looking for. This process of constantly switching focus impedes the flow of your thought processes.

Learning how to type properly takes the hunting right out of typing so you can focus on the content of what you’re typing instead of the actof typing itself. And you’ll rarely if ever need to look down at the keyboard.

3. Fewer errors

Typing errors really slow you down, too. When you make even a one-letter typo, you’re forced to stop, press the backspace/delete key, and then type the letter that you intended. That’s three keys being typed instead of one—or three times as much time spent on one letter.

Also, when you’re able to keep your eyes focused on the computer screen, you’ll catch errors more quickly.

And of course, smartphone and tablet keyboards are laid out in the same fashion as desktop keyboards. So once you learn where the keys are on a desktop keyboard, you’ll know exactly where they are on your mobile devices—boosting your efficiency there, too.

If you’re ready to learn how to type properly, retrain your brain and your fingers with the LinkedIn Learning course Typing Fundamentals.