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    Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?

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    25-Apr-2009 20:06:34#1 Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?

    I have used only colemak for a while and it became very natural for me, but I cannot release the full power of it ;-) I started the touch-typing adventure only about a year ago. But I made an excellent progress, at least it is excellent keeping in mind my former expectations.

    Now I am stuck with the typing process of my mind. I mean, it's like my mind do not believe my fingers. I often type something correctly and start hitting the backspace - surprising myself when I see it. Its like the fingers did its work sooner than my counscious give them order to do so. Then my counscious do not know what was typed only noticing that I typed something more than was planned or expected to do in the time. On the other hand there are the typing tests - when I run one I feel that I stress my fingers like driving a car accelerating and breaking simultaneously.

    Does anyone know a way how to learn another typing process or maybe think more quickly :) ?

    Seriously I think, that I should have empower a different typing/thinking process. I should type more of thoughts/sentences or words. Right now I believe that I do think of any letter to press, you know, years on hunt and peck typing.

    I feel that I type more counsciously when I am not discracted (?) by watching the output: I tried to type well know phrase with eyes closed. But I do not know yet if it could help anything.

    Any suggestion? Some interesting reading about how human brain works i terms of changind your habbits?


    Thanks

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    25-Apr-2009 20:29:36#2 Re: Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?

    I think you're looking at it too deeply. I type fastest and most accurately when I 'think' about every key. I don't really mean think of course, more an awareness of what my fingers are doing.

    I suggest practising 'blind typing'. Find some text you'd like to practise on (gutenberg, wikipedia, anything really), then open a text editor and drag the window so it's not in view. Then type what you see. You'll find that your fingers *must* slow down, otherwise you'll have many errors.

    I did this a lot early on. It's great practice.

    Edit: Make sure you type at least a paragraph before having a look at what you typed. Resist the urge to check every few characters.

    Last edited by simonh (25-Apr-2009 21:12:04)

    "It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in." - Earl of Chesterfield

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    26-Apr-2009 12:46:32#3 Re: Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?

    Thanks simonh!
    I think by saing "I did it a lot erly on" you mean that what I need is more practice. I like your way of learning touchtyping. It's improved version of what I found - the key thing which works here is not to watch the letters comming.

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    27-Apr-2009 09:50:00#4 Re: Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?

    Blind typing sounds interesting; it's what I'm trying to achieve anyway, but I haven't done it that way yet.

    I sometimes feel as hemmed down as you describe Bombadil, and at other times I'm "in the flow" and my fingers just glide effortlessly around with hardly any errors. I'm still trying to figure out what it takes to be in that latter state most of the time, apart from practice. The increased flow and lower error rate of the "good way" constitutes at least 10-15 WPM for me, and a lot less effort.

    I've started to lower my expectations though. It seems that some people will achieve around 60 WPM typing speed with practice. Not 80 WPM, not 100 WPM. Maybe it's a bit like your muscle fibres; not everyone is capable of becoming a sprinter. I can do 60 WPM easily now, and 70 WPM when I'm in "perfect flow"; I've seen 85 WPM over short stretches of "perfect flow" but I'm doubting I can sustain that kind of speed. Maybe my mind is too ponderous?  ;)

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    27-Apr-2009 11:32:33#5 Re: Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?
    bombadil said:

    Thanks simonh!
    I think by saing "I did it a lot erly on" you mean that what I need is more practice. I like your way of learning touchtyping. It's improved version of what I found - the key thing which works here is not to watch the letters comming.

    Yes, blind typing is great practice. By not having *any* visual feedback of what you are typing, you are forced to type carefully.

    When I first started this method of practising, every other word was misspelled. So, I slowed right down and my accuracy climbed. Here is the reasoning from a guy on 43things which is how I learnt about blind typing:


    steve_ko (43things) said:

    Making progress again (48 wpm) after an epiphany 10 months ago

    I managed to gain 3 wpm today after an epiphany led me to try a new type of drill. The epiphany occurred after reading about Barbara Blackburn, the world’s fastest typist. She learned to type on a Dvorak typewriter in 1938. Her error frequency was supposedly two-tenths of one percent.

    My epiphany was that she became such an accurate typist because in 1938 the penalty (in terms of lost time & productivity) of making a typing error was huge. Liquid Paper didn’t exist back then, so you pretty much had to re-type the whole page. Today, the cost of mistyping a letter is minimal – you just hit the backspace key – so there is not much motivation to focus on accuracy.

    This epiphany led me to try a new type of drill, one that would force me to type things correctly the first time and be less reliant on the backspace key.

    The drill is blind typing pangrams. I mentioned pangrams a few posts ago. A pangram is just a sentence that contains every letter of the alphabet. There are lots of web pages out there with dozens of pangrams (including the Wikipedia article on Pangram). Blind typing is typing without seeing the letters you press appear on the screen. For example, when you are typing in a password field and you only see bullet characters appear, you are blind typing.

    Blind typing requires you to really concentrate on accuracy, because you can’t check to see that the character you typed was correct. I found that blind typing forced me to shift from speed to accuracy. Typing pangrams ensured that I covered all the characters on the keyboard. After just blind typing a dozen or so pangrams, I found that my accuracy had improved dramatically.

    To do this drill just create a new document in your favorite text editor and position the window so that it is mostly off screen. Then bring up a web page with lots of pangrams on it and start typing those pangrams into that document. You won’t be able to see what you are typing as you are typing it, but you will be able to check what you typed later by dragging the window back onto the screen.

    I tried pangrams but found regular text easier and more enjoyable to type.

    "It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in." - Earl of Chesterfield

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    27-Apr-2009 22:21:36#6 Re: Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?

    I am using Amphetype this way now. Dragging the app window bottom so I can only see the upper part with the thext to rewrite. At the end Ampetype visually show if the whole entered text is correct. I find it difficult to spot mistakes in text. I remember reading somewhere that if the first and last letter of the word is correct your mind does not care much about the order of letters inside the words - it is understood from the context and error may pass unnoticed.

    I am happy with the typing abilities I posses now ;-)) however I feel it could be even better so I am going to try to release the full potential. OK, lets see if something changes in next few moths, it would be grate if happens so ;)

    Thank again.

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    28-Apr-2009 20:35:04#7 Re: Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?

    How about all of us in this range try blind typing practice for the next month and see what the results are ?

    I tried it with Amphetype and didn't see much advantage over just doing it with pangrams in a text editor window, except for the easy generation of random phrases.

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    08-Jun-2009 21:55:01#8 Re: Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?
    bombadil said:

    I am using Amphetype this way now. Dragging the app window bottom so I can only see the upper part with the thext to rewrite. At the end Ampetype visually show if the whole entered text is correct. I find it difficult to spot mistakes in text. I remember reading somewhere that if the first and last letter of the word is correct your mind does not care much about the order of letters inside the words - it is understood from the context and error may pass unnoticed.

    I am happy with the typing abilities I posses now ;-)) however I feel it could be even better so I am going to try to release the full potential. OK, lets see if something changes in next few moths, it would be grate if happens so ;)

    Thank again.

    I know this is an "old" post but felt I should comment on this if you want to get the most benefit from blind typing.

    Amphetype, as great a program as it is, is not what you should be using for blind typing. All you need is a text editor. You need to forget entirely about speed. You need to forget entirely about checking your speed. Perfect accuracy is the only goal. You see the text to be typed on the screen and your mind is focused on what your fingers are doing. Mistakes will be detected without seeing them on the screen. 

    That is the key to blind typing.

    Last edited by simonh (08-Jun-2009 21:55:53)

    "It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in." - Earl of Chesterfield

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    12-Jun-2009 07:10:52#9 Re: Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?

    I have had similar experiences as you, bombadil. I think what you are getting at when you say "Not think about typing and just type" is clearing your mind so that the process that's controlling the translation from what you see into finger movements doesn't get interference from other processes, such as trying to recall what you just typed and making sure it's right. It's only armchair psychology I know, but I feel like most of the time I get screwed up when typing is when I'm trying to perform an interfering task. For example, when I'm typing a sentence I've never seen, I start trying to comprehend what it means, and then I can't type anymore. This is especially annoying when you're trying to type one of the included novels in Amphetype. The whole advertised concept of "reading with you fingers" is worthless I think, and only leads to endless frustration.

    On the flip side of that coin, I find that if I completely zone out, my typing suffers too - I tend to move my fingers in familiar patterns that do not necessarily correspond to what I'm supposed to be typing. There are only very few times when my mindset goes into a sweet spot where I'm comprehending each one of my finger movements and the text just rolls out.

    I don't know what the answer is to overcome these problems. I guess I'm just going to keep drilling away until I require no conscious intervention to type most words correctly. One thing that I feel to be true is that you should try to make as few mistakes as possible as you drill. I feel like every wrong impulse that I inhibit before it turns into finger movement gets me one step closer to better typing skill, and every wrong keystroke takes me one step away. It's all reinforcement learning to me.

    Concerning blind typing - Is it really effective? To force myself to make few errors, I've set Amphetype to repeat any passage that I don't score higher than 99% accuracy on. It seems about as effective as not seeing what I'm typing in striking the fear of wrong keys deep into my heart.

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    12-Jun-2009 21:52:54#10 Re: Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?

    pmyshkin: Blind typing is a new name for an old skill: typing copy. Back in the typewriter days, roomfuls of secretaries would type the same thing day in day out:

    Dear Sir,

    Thank you for your enquiry...

    ...

    They had to be accurate with their typing. There was no other option. Allow me to quote again:

    "[Barbara Blackburn] became such an accurate typist because in 1938 the penalty (in terms of lost time & productivity) of making a typing error was huge. Liquid Paper didn’t exist back then, so you pretty much had to re-type the whole page. Today, the cost of mistyping a letter is minimal – you just hit the backspace key – so there is not much motivation to focus on accuracy."

    My mother worked for many years as a secretary. Everything was typed. It must have been hard but led to her typing at 90wpm.

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    Last edited by simonh (12-Jun-2009 21:59:13)

    "It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do, the less time one finds to do it in." - Earl of Chesterfield

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    29-Jun-2009 21:49:20#11 Re: Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?

    Hello,
    I am sorry for the long absence, I have been busy learning things for new project. I didn't practice at all during the time :( Although I am using colemak all the time. I have just made a typing test. The time made no difference to my speed, unfortunately the accuracy is impacted.  I must say I am tired just after the 2 minutes drill. That's probably the time to rethink about changing keyboard. The more I am using my MS400 the more I think it sucks! Cheap rubber membrane keys.

    Anyway I doubt if I want more typing speed. I am really happy now with my skills. Rather, I just wonder whether better typing skills lead to less typing effort? I see that long typing without a hurry just go by, but typing at maximum speed makes me tired – fingers, wrists – in a not so long time. Supposing I have to write some text, If I did it in shorter time would the saved time compensate enough for the effort to let my hands recover? What do you think?

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    29-Jun-2009 21:54:22#12 Re: Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?

    A few weeks back I came across this: http://www.lifehackingmovie.com/2009/05 … -freeware/
    Highly recommended.

    Better idea would be to just unbind backspace key under vim. Yeh, I know, not all people use vim ;)

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    30-Jun-2009 07:53:11#13 Re: Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?
    bombadil said:

    Better idea would be to just unbind backspace key under vim.

    What, and have people go 'd n' (colemak.vim) on you instead?  ;)

    To me, accuracy is far more useful than raw speed. To be honest, without top-notch accuracy my speed will be shot anyway - maybe I have poor backspacing skills, haha? More importantly though, my best typing experiences are when I manage to completely forget about the typing itself and just let the thoughts flow effortlessly to the screen.

    Sometimes, these moments of flow are realized by blind typing. I'll simply let my eyes rest elsewhere and type away. It feels as if I'm using the Force, somehow...

    obi-wan said:

    This time, let go your conscious self and act on instinct.
    Your eyes can deceive you. Don't trust them.
    Stretch out with your feelings.

    ;)

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    01-Jul-2009 22:49:17#14 Re: Learning of just typing, not thinking about typing?

    Let the force be with you ;)

    Yeah, I would love to just think/feel and see the words comming - let typing be only a reminder of the past :)

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