How to type faster: a practical plan from 30 to 70 WPM

To type faster, slow down first. Measure your current speed, practise until you rarely make mistakes, learn to keep your fingers on the home row without looking, and then drill the specific keys you get wrong. Fifteen focused minutes a day beats an hour once a week. Most people who type with a few fingers can roughly double their speed this way.

Why typing speed matters more now

For most of us, typing is how we talk to AI. A good request to an AI assistant is often a full paragraph: the background, the task, what to avoid. If typing is slow or tiring, you write shorter requests, and shorter requests get worse answers. Typing well is a quiet advantage in the age of AI.

Step 1: Measure where you are

Typing speed is measured in words per minute (WPM). A “word” is counted as five characters, including spaces, so that long and short words are treated fairly.

• Gross WPM = (characters typed ÷ 5) ÷ minutes
• Net WPM = gross WPM minus uncorrected errors per minute
• Accuracy = correct characters ÷ total characters

Take a one-minute test and write down your net WPM and accuracy. As a rough guide:

Net WPM	Level
Under 30	Hunting for keys
30 to 45	Around average
45 to 65	Comfortable for office work
65 to 90	Fast
90 and up	Very fast

Step 2: Fix accuracy before speed

This is the step people skip. If your accuracy is under about 95%, you’re losing more time to corrections than you’d gain by going faster. Every mistake costs a backspace, a retype, and your rhythm.

For one week, type at a pace where you make almost no errors, even if it feels slow. Speed comes back quickly, and it comes back cleaner.

Step 3: Learn the home row

Touch typing means each finger owns certain keys, and your eyes stay on the screen.

• Rest your left fingers on A S D F and your right on J K L ;.
• The small bumps on F and J let you find the position by feel.
• Each finger reaches up and down from its home key, then returns.
• Thumbs handle the space bar.

If you currently type with a few fingers, your speed will drop for a week or two while you relearn. That’s the cost of a much higher ceiling. Stay with it.

Step 4: Stop looking at the keyboard

Looking down is the habit that holds most people back. Ways to break it:

• Keep your eyes on the text you’re producing, not on your hands.
• When you don’t know where a key is, pause and feel for it from the home row instead of peeking.
• If you can’t resist, cover your hands with a cloth for a few sessions.

Mistakes will go up briefly. Let them.

Step 5: Drill your weak keys

Everyone has a handful of keys that cause most of their errors. Common ones are the bottom row, the letters under the ring and little fingers, and pairs that use the same finger twice in a row.

General practice spreads your time evenly across all keys. Targeted practice spends it where you’re actually slow. Find your worst five keys and practise words that are full of them.

This is the idea behind Keycraft Arcade, a set of free typing games I built. It notices which keys trip you up and feeds you more of them. After each round, a colour-coded keyboard shows where your misses landed and which finger slipped most, with a one-click drill for it.

Step 6: Practise short and often

• 15 minutes a day is enough. Stop while you’re still sharp.
• Warm up slowly for two minutes, aiming for perfect accuracy.
• Do speed bursts. Type a short sentence as fast as you can, then repeat it until it’s clean.
• Finish with real text. Write an email or a journal entry using your new technique.

Motivation is the hard part of daily practice, which is why games help. In Keycraft you can shoot zombies by typing the words over their heads, type to a beat, or fight a 1v1 battle where longer words hit harder. The opponents type at 25, 45, 70 and 100 WPM, and the last one, Echo, adapts to your speed.

A four-week plan

Week	Focus	Daily 15 minutes
1	Accuracy and home row	Slow drills on the home row, then the top row. Aim for 97% accuracy
2	All keys without looking	Bottom row, capitals and punctuation. Eyes on the screen
3	Weak keys	Find your five worst keys. Drill words that use them
4	Speed	Bursts on short sentences, then one-minute tests. Track your net WPM

Test yourself at the end of each week under the same conditions, and write the number down. Seeing the line go up is what keeps you going.

Small things that help

• Sit properly. Feet flat, elbows near your sides, wrists floating instead of resting hard on the desk.
• Use all ten fingers, including both Shift keys: the opposite hand from the letter you’re capitalising.
• Learn the common words as shapes. “the”, “and”, “that”, “with” should come out as one motion.
• Learn a few shortcuts. Jumping by word and deleting by word (Ctrl or Option with the arrow keys and Backspace) saves more time than raw speed.
• Take breaks. If your hands or wrists hurt, stop. Pain that continues is a reason to talk to a doctor, not to push through.

How long does it take?

It varies. With daily practice, many people who start around 30 WPM reach 50 to 60 within a couple of months, and touch typing starts to feel natural within a few weeks. The gains are fastest at the start and slower later, which is normal.

Does voice typing make this pointless?

Dictation is great for a first draft, and I use it for notes. But editing, coding, working in a quiet office or a noisy café, and writing precise instructions for an AI still happen on a keyboard. The two work well together: talk the rough idea, then type the fix.

Ready to practise? Keycraft Arcade is free, runs in your browser and starts with a one-minute benchmark.