The Ultimate Writing Meta Skill
It can save you 10 hours per week or more if you get really good at it
Hello dear writer,
Welcome to a brand new issue of #TheWriteWay — a weekly newsletter to help you upscale your writing, build accountability, and inch closer to your goals. Thank you so much for being a part of this incredible community. We can’t wait to support you as you scale amazing heights and make your dreams come true.
Today’s issue is brought to you by Shivendra Misra. In this issue, we’ll cover one of the best meta-skills that any writer can develop.
Ever since people have asked me for writing advice, I’ve said that the writing game is about both volume and quality. This means, as writers, we need to publish as much as we can without dropping out quality.
And to do that, we need to learn how to write faster. There are many ways to write faster than I’ll perhaps discuss in the future editions of this newsletter but there’s one thing that’s the most overlooked, yet gives the most rewards.
Touch typing.
Whether we realize it or not, especially as writers, our typing speed matters a lot. About a year back, I was a two-finger typer at best. I used the first two fingers of each hand to type - which is how I’ve seen most people type as well.
Today, I can type at the same speed I speak. Maybe even faster.
This is one of the main reasons why I can get done with most articles within 30-45 minutes - because I’m not wasting time putting my thoughts to words on the screen and neither am I wasting time hitting backspace repeatedly to correct grammatical mistakes (yes, I’ve become both faster and more accurate).
Wouldn’t you want that too?
Alas, if you’re like most people you use the “hunt-and-peck” method - that is, using a couple of fingers of each hand to strike the keyboard keys.
And that is slow…
incredibly…
slow…
How Did We End Up Like This?
No one ever taught us to type - we were just handed the keyboard with the letters and were expected to figure out the rest.
Back in the days of typewriters and the early days of PCs, kids were still taught how to write. But gradually, as kids grew up with phones, tablets, and laptops, schools thought it unnecessary to offer those classes anymore.
They just assumed kids know how to type. Well, they don’t. Sit in any juvenile computer class today and you’ll see kids struggling to get their words on the screen.
Since no one taught them the right way, they resolved to the instinctual, albeit inefficient, “hunt-and-peck” method.
And the irony of it all is this - while typing classes are long gone, teachers still spend hours teaching the correct way to hold a pencil and make cursive letters!
What’s the use of being able to write in cursive when you take minutes to type a single paragraph?
Why Touch Type?
Okay, enough trash-talk about the education system. You must be thinking,
“Why should I learn to touch type? My typing method serves me well. I can even type without looking at the keyboard!”
If you’re asking this question, you have no idea what touch typing can do for you. Let me enlighten you. Let’s crunch some numbers….
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