Updated 19 September 2026
How to type faster
Stop looking at the keyboard, learn the home row, and aim for accuracy rather than speed. Practise ten minutes a day rather than an hour a week, and drill the specific keys you miss instead of typing random text. Most people go from about 35 wpm to about 65 within three months doing only that.
Below, in order of how much difference each one actually makes. The first three are worth more than everything after them combined.
Nine things that work
Stop looking at your hands
This is the whole thing. Looking down is exactly what prevents the muscle memory from forming, and every week you spend glancing at the keyboard is a week that teaches your fingers nothing.
It will feel worse before it feels better. Accept being slow for two weeks.
Learn the home row and return to it
Left hand on a s d f, right hand on j k l ;. The ridges on F and J let you find your position by feel. Every finger goes back home after it presses a key — that return is what makes the next key findable without looking.
Aim for 97% accuracy, not for a speed
Chasing wpm directly teaches you to type fast and wrong, and that habit is harder to unlearn than slowness. Accuracy first; speed is a by-product of accuracy, not the other way round.
Ten minutes a day, every day
Frequency beats duration for muscle memory by a wide margin. Daily short sessions are the strongest predictor of who actually learns this.
Drill your worst keys specifically
Nearly everyone is held back by two or three letters, not by general slowness. Find out which, then practise those. Random text keeps handing you the letters you are already good at.
Practise real text, not just word lists
Once you are past 95% accuracy on plain words, switch to text with punctuation and capitals. Plenty of people type 70 wpm on word lists and 45 on an actual email, because they never drilled the shift key or the comma.
Fix your hands and your chair
Wrists floating rather than resting, elbows at roughly a right angle, screen at eye level. Bad posture does not just hurt; it forces your fingers to travel further, and travel is time.
Type things you would have typed anyway
Write your emails and notes without looking, badly, rather than only practising in a tool. Transfer to real work is the step where most people's practice quietly fails.
Measure once a week, not every day
Daily tests mostly measure how tired you are. Weekly measurement shows the trend and spares you the noise.
Three things that waste your time
Switching to Dvorak or Colemak. The evidence that alternative layouts are meaningfully faster for most people is thin, and the cost is months of being slow on every machine that is not yours. If you are at 40 wpm on QWERTY, the problem is not the layout.
Buying a mechanical keyboard to get faster. A good keyboard is more pleasant and may help you keep practising, which is not nothing. But it will not add words per minute on its own, and a lot of people buy one instead of practising.
Typing the same passage over and over. You end up memorising the passage rather than learning the keyboard, and your score rises while your typing does not.
What to expect, week by week
| Week | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 | You get slower. Much slower — often half your old speed. This is the correct and unavoidable cost of not looking down. |
| 2–3 | The home row starts to feel automatic. You are still slower than you were. Most people who quit, quit here. |
| 4–6 | You pass your old speed without noticing the moment it happened. Accuracy climbs. |
| 2–3 months | 50–65 wpm without looking, for most people who kept the daily habit. |
| Beyond | Progress slows a lot. Getting to 80+ takes deliberate work on punctuation, numbers and your specific weak pairs. |
The dip in weeks one to three is not a sign it is going badly. It is a sign it is going exactly as it should — you are replacing a habit that works badly with one that will work well, and there is no version of that which feels good at the time.
Where to start today
Take the test so you have a number to beat, then pick whichever of these you will genuinely still be doing in three weeks: drills if you are disciplined, or the game if you are honest about the fact that you are not.
Related
Frequently asked questions
How can I type faster immediately?
You cannot, and any advice that promises it is wrong. The only change that produces a real, permanent increase is learning to type without looking at the keyboard, and that makes you slower for one to three weeks before it makes you faster. What you can do today is stop correcting every typo mid-sentence and stop resting your wrists, both of which cost more time than people realise.
How long does it take to double my typing speed?
For someone starting at 30 to 35 wpm with two-finger typing, roughly three months of ten minutes a day gets most people to 60 or 65. The first month is the hard one because your speed drops before it rises.
Does a mechanical keyboard help you type faster?
Not directly. A keyboard you enjoy using may help you practise more, which matters. But swapping hardware does not add words per minute on its own, and it is a popular way to feel productive without practising.
Is it worth learning Dvorak or Colemak?
For most people, no. The evidence that alternative layouts are meaningfully faster is weak, and the cost is months of slowness plus being unable to type properly on anyone else's machine. If you are at 40 wpm on QWERTY, the layout is not what is limiting you.
Why do I keep making the same typing mistakes?
Because you are practising the text in front of you rather than the keys you are bad at. Nearly everyone has two or three letters or letter pairs that account for most of their errors. Find out which ones and drill those specifically; general practice will keep handing you the letters you are already comfortable with.