When your main job is to process text files and write code, improving your typing speed is one of the best ways to greatly save time. Everyone knows that learning proper typing techniques is crucial and practicing more, but could investing in an upgrade to a better keyboard help improve your typing speed?
Can upgrading your keyboard make typing faster?
A better, more expensive keyboard won’t make you type faster, just like buying top-of-the-line cookware won’t instantly make you a chef.
If you want to type quickly, you must first learn to touch type. On a standard QWERTY keyboard, there is a small bump on the F and J keys, which is where the index finger should be placed, which plays the role of an anchor point. Let your fingers hover over the keys near F and J, ready to move freely and press the keys independently. Often when you see people typing without looking down at the keyboard, that’s because they use the raised anchor points to determine where their hands are and remember where the rest of the case is relative to the F and J keys. There are actually no strict rules about which finger presses which key. You just need to remember the approximate location of each key on the keyboard. You may even no longer strive for Chinese printing on the keyboard.
Once you get used to the correct typing position, you can practice typing on some websites. My personal favorite when it comes to hits is Typing.tw online hitting practice, free online practice forever, no need to download; if you want to play English, you can try it TypeRacer, you can compete with others online, competition is a powerful motivation.
Keyboard specifications that affect typing speed
Let’s go back to the metaphor of pots. A more advanced pot won’t make you a chef, but it can help you heat and cook more efficiently. So once you learn how to type quickly, a better keyboard can indeed speed things up a bit because it doesn’t limit your own skills. Various keyboard specifications will affect typing speed, but for me, ergonomics is more important. Your wrists should be in a central position to avoid chronic pain and improve stamina, so there are many specially arranged ergonomic keyboards on the market, but for many people, this requires a lot of time to get used to the key configuration.
If the inclination of your keyboard is too high or too low, your wrists will need to be slightly bent, so you can try floating your wrists while typing, or purchase an additional hand rest to help raise your wrists. If conditions permit, the seat can be adjusted to match the height of the desktop, allowing the shoulders to droop naturally and the arms to bend naturally for typing, which can effectively avoid work interruption due to shoulder, neck, and arm soreness.
Also, make sure your keyboard layout includes all the keys you use frequently. If you do a lot of number crunching, a separate numeric keypad will objectively make you enter numbers faster. The author relies heavily on mechanical keyboards, which make typing faster, more comfortable and triggering accurately. Compared with membrane keyboards, which affect typing speed, mechanical keyboards have several advantages. The two most important specifications are actuation force and key travel. The former tells you how much force you need to apply to effectively record the keystrokes. The key travel is the degree of darkness. Lower actuation force and lower key travel reduce the need for a sharp weapon to press the keys. Certain key pitches have tactile feedback to help you feel if they’ve been pressed effectively, but this isn’t necessary. Once you get used to the keyboard, you can develop muscle memory that allows you to type quickly with minimal effort.
The last thing I want to mention is an issue with the keyboard itself, which is when a key registers a single press as multiple presses, causing letters to be entered repeatedly. This is most common on older mechanical keyboards because over time, the contacts inside the key shafts become dirty or aged and worn.
No matter what, you should buy a keyboard that’s not too bad
Although gorgeous, beautiful and expensive high-end mechanical keyboards will improve your work efficiency (at least not by much), you should still buy a good quality mechanical keyboard, and you can find a good one for about more than 2,000 yuan now. The factory-finished key switches can emit a soothing typing sound, making typing an unstoppable pleasure. Even if you don’t like it too loud, there is a mute option. At the same time, mechanical keyboards are also more durable and can easily last you 10 years without being affected by other external forces, water, or other accidents.
Source: KOCPC Chinese