Why Typing Well Is Important for Your Health and Productivity
Typing well is more important than you think.
If you are someone that expend too much time in front of a computer, and you don’t even remember how you learned to type, this article is for you. Probably sometimes you feel some discomfort in your hands at the end of the day, or you feel that responding an email is too much work.
I am going to tell you my experience and why learning how to type properly is essential for your health and productivity.
For Your Health
I am a Software Engineer, I work all day in front of a computer. A couple of years ago, I was feeling pain under the thumb in my right hand. This pain was odd because It wasn’t present all the time, It appeared in the middle of the mornings and persisted until I went to sleep. Then the next day I woke up and the pain wasn’t there until again the middle of the morning, then it repeated the cycle.
I went to the orthopedist, he reviewed my hand and ordered some X-Rays. After that and with the results, he told me that this was a Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI), fortunately it wasn’t advanced enough and with some physical therapy, the pain was going to disappear. And indeed that happened, after some sessions my hand was back to normal.
The doctor told me that this was something usual in people that spend too much time working in a computer, he suggested taking regular pauses to stretch, and with this, the pain wasn’t going to appear again.
One year passed, and the same pain started again but with a lower intensity and for short periods of time. I remembered the suggestions of the doctor (I didn’t follow them at the time) and started to take this seriously. I installed Strechly to remind me to take breaks, and every 30 minutes I stand up, stretch and take a small break for 5 minutes.
Even with the pauses for stretching, sometimes I felt some discomfort in my hand. It wasn’t as serious as the previous ones, but it was annoying enough to be ignored. Some time passed, and I began to notice that the pain appear just in the days when I used the computer, this was interesting.
So, I started to analyze my typing behaviors and I found out that my pain was more present when I was heavily typing. Then I decided to buy an ergonomic mechanical keyboard, and after looking around I found out that the combination of ergonomic plus mechanical is not so common, the options are limited and expensive.
After doing some research on Reddit, someone shared that before to consider buying an ergonomic keyboard, it was a good idea to learn how to type properly. That led me thinking, I didn’t remember how I learned to type, so I put my phone to record me while typing, and it was shocking. I was mainly using four fingers.
Definitely, I needed to learn how to type properly. I began with keybr for 30 minutes a day, at first it was frustrating. There are some keys that are specially difficult, and at some point you are going to feel that you are wasting your time. That's why I decided to do a fixed period of time daily, when it was more difficult I concentrate on finish the 30 minutes.
Ten hours of practice passed and finally, I began to feel comfortable typing. I passed from 24 words per minute to 70, this is not impressive considering that out there is people who type more than 100. But for me, it was really amazing, how something that I do every day could be performed more comfortably.
Eight months have passed since I learned to type properly, and this combined with the pauses and I have not felt the discomfort again.
For Your Productivity
Another added benefit of learning how to type is that I feel more productive, when you type faster you feel that you can convert your thoughts more easily in concrete actions.
Your workflow is going to improve drastically, now I can respond emails and chats on Slack faster. For programmers to do documentation sometimes is a boring task that we must do, when you type faster is a breeze, I even enjoy it now.
Also, because learning to type was somehow a new habit for me, and it also was something that I practically needed to learn from scratch; in the end this gave me the confidence to learn a lot more stuff, like learning how to cook or the habit of reading more.
But let me tell you that I am not saying that learn how to type is going to improve your cooking skills, what I mean is that I am not a person of habits, I usually find interesting stuff to do, I do them a couple of times, and then I quit. That is very common for me, but with this typing thing, the progress that I made in a relatively little time gave me the confidence that I can learn how to do anything If I stick to it long enough to see the results.
Recap
- If you feel some discomfort in your hands, go to the doctor. On time diagnosis could help you prevent long-term injuries.
- Make pauses, we probably already know that they are good for our health, but we don’t do them. Take some action, install an app in your cellphone or computer to help you remind you the times that you need to take pauses.
- Learn to type properly, if you pass more than three hours a day in front of a computer, and you don’t know how to do it, it’s totally worth it, look for a typing learning program and start practicing. Define a fixed time to practice daily, and try to stick to it.
