[surfsvammel]

Record yourself writing, or programming, or whatever it is you do at the keyboard. You will see that it is not the speed of your typing that is the bottleneck, it is the creative process.

You are not a mindless machine hacking away at the keyboard. And, if you are, then the life hack take away is to stop and think a bit before typing.

Going slower often has lots of benefits.

[userbinator]

The typing speed absolutely is a bottleneck --- the more time spent typing, the less time spent thinking. Have you ever experienced times when you lost your train of thought because you were busy writing it down? That's what faster typing will avoid. It's true that the average typing speed will be low, but the higher your burst speed, the sooner you will return to thinking after each thought that needs to be written down.

[aqme28]

I don't think that's true. I can think while I type just fine. We are not machines who can do only one thing at a time.

As an analogy-- plenty of people can play their instrument while they improvise the next bar in their head.

Try it! Transcribe the words I've written here and while thinking about the weather.

[Gravyness]

> We are not machines who can do only one thing at a time

I thought most machines could do multiple things at once?

Humans barely walk and talk at the same time, and stumble much more likely than when not talking.

As someone who plays piano, you have to spend years perfecting it so it becomes automatic enough to offload your brain and only then you can improvise while playing. Your movements have migrated to a "fast" part of your brain. If you record yourself and listen to it, it's a whole different thing, you feel as if your ears were blocked to the melody, only listening enough to improvise the next key, and so on.

I am pretty sure, but to lazy to find sources which I know there are plenty, that Multitasking always yields worse quality results than doing one task. If you don't care about quality, then why don't you practice your dance moves as you write and think, as well?

If you're not doing something 100%, then you're half-assing two things.

[bemmu]

Kind of like build time. Even with only a small fraction of time spent compiling, it can distract you and make it less enjoyable to code vs. seeing your changes instantly.

[sebmellen]

This is a good point. I agree that going slower improves writing quality, in most cases.

But there are often times where I'm struck with a particularly well-crystallized thought, and typing speed becomes a huge bottleneck in recording its structure before the thought dissolves back into the ether of conceptual soup in my brain.

[aspaviento]

That's only when you need to make an effort to think about the keys you are pressing. When you have assimiliated the keyboard layout it becomes so automatic and natural that you don't even think about it.

[nscmnto]

Having switched to an Ergodox which slowed me down and working on a new project, this is absolutely true.

[tartoran]

Good point. But I personally make use of a lot of keyboard shortcuts and find that they make my process not necessarily faster but seamless. I don’t have to think of how to do something as my muscle memory translates the intent into command. That also helps not break my context by using the mouse, opening a menu, etc so it keeps me in my creative/productive zone. So the typing speed is not necessarily the productivity boost we need but the seamlessness of the process I think. If you’re using emacs for example the typing speed may also hold you back a bit if you’re slow.

[jbjbjbjb]

Everyone says slow typing is ok but I also see a lot of people get frustrated at input lag when typing into a slow IDE

[tartoran]

The larger the input lag the bigger the discomfort I have when typing and navigating a domcument. It’s doable but feels uncomfortable as we have to wait for the confirmation we hit the right keys. It helps not to look at the screen at all but if you find an error in the previous sentence it’s a pain to navigate back and fix it

[llbeansandrice]

I feel like this is distinctly different though. If you're drawing/sketching, does it matter the speed at which you can draw? Now think about how much of an issue input lag is. It's obviously not exactly the same but I think it isolates why your personal typing speed and input lag are different things.

[karmakaze]

So true. I made the difficult transition from QWERTY to an alternate layout, then another alternate layout after being dissatisfied. Ultimately I had to use typing practice sites because I simply didn't do enough typing in the course of working on the computer all day every day to relearn and retain. Still worth it, so much more comfortable now.

[charles_f]

That's true when doing creative work, but for other occasions, notably note taking, speed does matter.