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Productivity 101 - Touch typing

In the past two weeks, I reflected on 2022 and what I can do to improve something (anything) in 2023. One of the things I need to optimize is my productivity to gain a better work/life balance. I need to become more efficient with mundane tasks. One of those tasks is typing. Taking meeting notes is such a critical but dreading task. It always takes a lot of energy to concentrate on typing while simultaneously observing and absorbing the conversation - and contributing to the discussion. Meeting notes are essential for reflecting on meetings and capturing all the action items. The actual action of capturing the notes must become a natural task that does not require a lot of energy and is not a distraction.

I need to improve my typing. I am too slow and make too many mistakes, which prevents me from writing efficient and practical notes. I will be much more productive if my typing rate and accuracy improve.

I started reading a bit about touch typing, and I found two websites that I have started using now to learn and improve my touch typing.

  1. https://www.typingclub.com/
  2. https://www.keybr.com/

It is shocking how badly I perform in those exercises. Conscious of this and applying the rules for touch typing takes a lot of work. Writing this text using the touch typing rules takes more time than using the search & rescue approach. But with a bit of daily practice, I will be able to learn to become a better touch typer quickly, and I hope this will ultimately lead to better productivity. Hopefully!

As with many things in life, this is an excellent example of building habits (and breaking old habits). I must remember consistently placing my fingers on the ‘home row’ before beginning to type.