Since last Wednesday I've been teaching myself to type properly – that is, to use all ten fingers and not look at the keyboard (touch type) instead of hopping around the keyboard with between two and five fingers like I've been doing for most of my life.

Not that my previous typing speed was abysmally slow, or anything – when you've spent a few years writing overlong, overdetailed blog entries, you tend to get decently speedy with your typing, however inefficient. My two finger speed is around 50 word per minute, which, while not really being "fast" has basically been good enough for a number of years now. By contrast, my week-old touch typing skills are only getting me up to a somewhat-infuriating 30 wpm, largely thanks to a good deal of mistypes and backspaces and a few pauses to remember where the keys are and get my finger position correct. I'm still hitting the Y and B keys with the wrong fingers fairly regularly, and the right Shift took some getting used to.

But that's 30 wpm after 6 days of irregular practice with a wholly unfamiliar way of moving my fingers around, which I think is a pretty good return on investment. A few more weeks/months and I should reach and surpass my old two finger rate.

Probably the hardest thing about learning to type properly was the really uncomfortable feeling of slow uselessness I encountered in the first few days, when I was forcing myself to type properly in everything I did as a way of practicing. Replying to messages and posting comments was an exercise in frustration at maybe ten words per minute with countless screwups, and the allure of my old methods was as great as it was destructive.

Go back to typing with two fingers, it's easier and faster! You know you want to…

Somehow, I resisted, and it's slowly starting to feel weird and wrong to type the way I used to.

My fingers hurt a bit though. My little fingers especially aren't used to this sort of a workout. I suppose it'll go away in time, though.

So how have you been, 64Digits?