Typing

When I first started to learn to type in junior high, I had already had a limited exposure to computers and keyboards. I was a decent hunter-pecker. I appreciated the idea of touch typing though. I remember showing off my skill one day to my dad. I’m pretty sure I was typing the classic sentence about the fox and dog, and I showed him (proudly) how I could type the entire thing, every letter in the alphabet, without looking down at the keys. He said that was pretty good, and then said, “What about this? What if you look at the keys?” And he typed the sentence much faster while looking down, not quite hunting and pecking but somewhere in between.

I was thinking about this as I struggled through typing in the Dvorak layout this week. I feel like I’m actually starting to get the key placement down, but I keep wanting my fingers to have the muscle memory to go as fast as my Qwerty speed. Most of the advice I’ve read on learning to type suggests that slow is better. Accuracy should be the first goal and speed will come later. This is really what I’ve struggled with, not the new layout, not the unfamiliar arrangement or letter combinations, it’s the idea that I can’t be as fast as I am used to. This is not a new problem for me.

Roller Skating

Some of you will remember roller rinks. Some of you may even still have one nearby; although, I haven’t been to one in years (decades?). When I was growing up, there was a roller rink not too far from us, and we frequented it pretty regularly. At some point in my learning to skate, I encountered a problem. The skating area was not an infinite straight line; it was an oval. In order to continue skating for any length, I had to learn how to go around a curve.

I worked out my own technique that allowed me to use a walking/shuffling motion to get around the curve, but that isn’t the best way to do it. There is a better method that  involves picking up one foot and crossing it over the other and some repetition. Or something like that. I never actually learned how to do it. It was too slow. The actual motion wasn’t slow, but learning it was. I had several different people offer to teach me, but I never pursued it for long. That learning was getting in the way of my skating.

So, I remained stunted in my skating skills. When it came to racing, I actually did alright for a while because I was able to catch kids on the straightaways. But as we got older, those with decent technique left me behind. Also, rollerblades.

Swimming

I had a similar issue with swimming. I don’t actually recall learning how to swim when I was a kid, but I know I was never taught “proper” technique, not the strokes of competitive swimmers. And that was fine. I powered my way through the bad form. For the most part, I didn’t really know any better until Melanie (who grew up in the world of competitive swimming) offered to teach me how to swim laps for real. Or maybe I talked her into teaching me. Either way, we were in grad school, and as an educated man in his late twenties, I quickly learned that I didn’t know how to swim.

I didn’t have breath control. I didn’t know how to coordinate my arms and my torso. I didn’t know how to kick correctly. I couldn’t even float.

As we worked through the various issues I was having, I started to progress some, to find my way a little more gracefully through the water. But I was still never patient enough. Rather than do the drills that would make proper form a habit, I wanted to do faster laps. I wanted get tangibly better, so I would allow my technique to fall by the wayside when I was trying to speed up. And that’s unfortunate because the practice falls into that repetitive, meditative exercise I alluded to yesterday. But you can’t get there if you’re worried about drowning. And by focusing on speed, on being better already, I never really moved past the uncomfortable stage.

I won’t say that I have given up on swimming, but I think it’s safe to conclude that I won’t have a triumphant return to skates anytime soon. And I still can’t float.

Writing

When it comes to writing, it can be difficult to know how to slow down, to build the proper technique. I mean, we know how to put words together into sentences, together into paragraphs. We know how writing works, right? While I think that it is true for the most part, I also believe we can find value in taking a step back from our larger ideas and focus on smaller chunks. We can improve our form by working on sentences removed from anything larger. We can build our technique by creating scenes or images that are not meant to be just one piece in a story or essay.

Sure, it’s slow. Sure, it feels wasteful. “What do you mean, write something without any intention of using it?” Through this practice, though, we can become better writers without the stress or baggage of wondering whether or not it’s good enough to go in our project. And we can hold onto it if we like it, waiting for a later time to use it.

Also, reading. Reading is very important for improving your writing, but it isn’t always fast either.

Once again, this is in the easier said than done category. I’m going to do some thinking about how best to do this myself, in a way that I can be held accountable. For now, here’s a short list of other activities where my inability to go slow ultimately hindered my growth.

• Playing guitar
• Soccer
• Spanish
• French
• Woodworking
• Drawing
• Playing the drums
• Playing the piano
• Photography
• And so on

Mostly, I’ve been using the Learn Dvorak keyboard training, which you can check out here. I like that you can choose to map your Qwerty keyboard to Dvorak without having to change anything else. It also has “lessons” where you can run through the Dvorak home keys and then add others by typing actual words. I have played around with it throughout the day, I would say averaging about 30 minutes a day. I first thought I would stick with a specific lesson until I “mastered” it, but I realized that would put me in a tough spot when it came time for my first typing test. So, I’ve gone through each of them a few times. The progress is slow so far, but here are a couple points I’ve picked up.

The Dvorak keyboard layout does make a lot more sense.

This is pretty obvious when you see how many words you can make from the basic home keys, the ones that don’t require you to ever move your fingers. Here’s a random selection: hose, tuna, aunt, snoot, teen, shots. Compared to the Qwerty, (adds, Alaska, dads, lass, flask), the obvious difference is the vowels. With Dvorak, you get them all except “i”, which is still on the home row. In Qwerty, you get “a”. Yup, just one vowel. According to the references I’ve looked at, the possible English words on the Qwerty home row, including moving the index finger for “g” and “h” tops out at under 200. And it includes many that only a Scrabble lover could appreciate. (But you do get the semi-colon!) As for how well these advantages play out, I think I’ll get a better sense of it as I go along.

Fun fact: one of the serendipitous combinations I got when moving to the full Dvorak keyboard was “joshing egoist”, which you can take however you wish.

Switching keyboard layouts is simple, but it isn’t easy.

Typing, for me at this point, falls into the category of “things you do every day, without thinking.” I suppose I knew that before, but trying a new layout really throws that in your face. It felt similar to learning a new language to me, or maybe it reminded me what it was like to learn how to type at the very beginning. Although, even that doesn’t quite compare because when I learned for the first time, I didn’t have a reference point. It made me think about what it must be like for someone who has had a significant injury and is forced to relearn how to walk or write. I still don’t think I could imagine how excruciating that must be, but I think the keyboard layout switch gives me a little insight. I’m sure one of the major differences is that there are no major consequences with this experiment, so that relieves much of the stress and frustration. It is certainly a good exercise in patience, though.

The early part of the learning curve can be fun and maybe addictive.

It is pretty easy to see small victories when practicing. It feels good to correctly remember where a letter is without having to “cheat” or take forever thinking about it. And the practice itself doesn’t require a lot of thinking, just concentration. It can be a bit of a break, like playing a game. However, just like with playing games, it is easy to turn to it to avoid “real” work. I found myself thinking, more than once, “Eh, I don’t want to think about X right now. I could just do some typing instead.” And it can actually be more dangerous than a typical game because I feel like I am being productive in learning this new skill. I have to be conscious of what is truly important and what is more of a side project. Sometimes that introspection can be difficult. Using typing practice as a form of procrastination is something I’ll have to watch for.

I’m not ready to make the switch to Dvorak.

If I went completely cold turkey, I would probably be much further along in my Dvorak skills, but I can’t really imagine how much slower all of my work would have gone. It would be hours and hours I think. For now, I will stick with the slower transition. I am considering switching over to Dvorak for the occasional email, etc. when I have time instead of just doing the separate practice. In part, because I’ve found that it is a different situation when you are trying to compose in your mind and remember where letters are at the same time.

So, that’s where I stand right now. Let me know if you have any questions or if you’re playing along at home. Thanks for reading.

from Wikipedia

I recently (like just a few days ago recently) wrote about how Qwerty vs Dvorak isn’t really a productive discussion when it comes to writing. Because typing is only one, somewhat insignificant aspect of the process, if you even type at all. But then I wrote yesterday about the Five Karate Moves for Success, and I started thinking about the Try Something New move. And here’s where we get into the weeds, or leaves of grass in this case because I think maybe a little Dvorak experiment could payoff for both typing and writing. “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” I’m pretty sure Whitman Whitman was referring to keyboard layouts.

If you read more than a few posts of mine, after I actually have more than a few posts available, you’ll likely recognize that I don’t always argue the same side of an issue. In part, that’s because I’m often exploring my own ideas through writing, and I don’t have them set in stone. Or, I might come across some new information that causes me to reconsider an earlier position. If I were a politician, I would be accused of not knowing what I think or changing my mind when it’s convenient. Since I’m just a person who likes to ask questions, I’m comfortable in my flip-floppiness. I also happen to think that an adherence to resolve, an inability (or unwillingness) to consider new data, is a major source of our currently bitter political discourse. But that’s really a topic for another day.

For now, I want to say the following. 1) I like experiments. 2) I like the possibility of self-improvement. 3) After reading up on Dvorak a little more, I realized it’s not just about speed but also about ergonomics and stamina; a more efficient keyboard can lead to fewer finger problems and allow you to type fast for longer periods. 4) I’m second-guessing my hypothesis that faster typing doesn’t lead to better writing; I feel like it could, especially if it allows you to enter more of a flow state, especially if you’re working for ugly first drafts.

So, I’m going to see where this leads me. I’ll report back, maybe once a week, maybe biweekly. Here’s a screenshot of a very informal typing test I did on typingtest.com, which will serve as my benchmark. If you want to play along, I’m starting with the exercises at http://learn.dvorak.nl/ It has a little web app that allows you to learn the Dvorak setup without changing your keyboard settings. Some people recommend just switching cold turkey, but since my day job (and my night job and my in between jobs) relies heavily on my ability to write/type coherently, I’m going to start a little slower. I don’t know what type of daily schedule I’ll hold myself to, but I’ll relay that in my first report. Let me know if you have any questions, or if you think this is totally dumb, or if you really just don’t care about my typing (I think that’s probably valid).

Wish me luck.

In a podcast I was listening to recently, the guest was asked about the Dvorak keyboard and why he thought it was the only way to type (he’s a programmer). I have researched the Dvorak vs Qwerty layout in the past, but at the time, most recommendations were for getting an entirely new keyboard, and I didn’t go any further with it. Now, (I’m sure it’s been this way for a while) you can change some simple settings and use your current keyboard; you just can’t look down at the keys when you’re lost. But then I started thinking about whether or not it was worth the switch. Is my typing speed really what’s holding me back as a writer?

Of course not. At least, I’m pretty sure it isn’t. I don’t type super fast, somewhere in the 80 wpm range when I’m just transcribing something, but that slows down quite a bit when I’m writing on the fly. I don’t think my typing speed is slower than my thinking speed. I compose at a slower rate, in part because I’m typically editing as I write. And even if it were my typing slowing me down, is that really what gets in the way of how much I write? Or how good my writing is?

Any time I start to think along those lines, I find myself considering Thomas Jefferson or Charles Dickens, or some other prolific writer of the past who was working with a quill or another “crude” writing instrument. I don’t really know that a new keyboard layout is what is going to help me accomplish my goals as a writer. I’m still always on the lookout though. And it’s that way in much of my life. When exploring meditation, I’m trying to find the best app for it. Or the best shoes for running. But the masters of those disciplines didn’t achieve what they did because they had the fanciest or most efficient tools. They got to the peak because they kept climbing.

It reminds me of someone I know who had an idea for adapting a great learning system he had created for himself. He had gone through this extensive process of note taking and organization in folders and binders. He said it was instrumental to his learning experience, and he wanted to create something similar, or even an electronic product for other people to use. He was explaining this to me and a mutual friend when the friend asked, “Do you think the process of creating that system, of figuring out how all that information went together, is what made it so effective for you?” Often the shortcut will get us to the same place, but we won’t be the same person when we get there. It’s the experience, the challenges along the way that shape who we are, as writers and as people.

This is something I struggle with. I’m big on efficiency and not repeating actions that don’t need to be repeated. That can be an advantage with something like programming or work that doesn’t necessarily require a lot of thought. Sometimes, though, going through the motions is exactly what we need to do. Because it allows us to build muscle memory. The motions ultimately lead to a break through or a creative expression that we wouldn’t have found on another path. And often, I spend more time thinking about the best way to do something than I do actually doing it. Sometimes the thinking pays off; sometimes the time would have been better spent doing.

Really, this can be distilled into an argument about efficient vs effective. It’s a topic lots of other people have talked about, and I hope to dive into some of that discussion soon. For now, I think we can all agree that being a faster typist won’t make me a better writer. But, honestly, I’m probably going to try it anyway. And I’ll get back to you about it.

In what areas do you try to find the latest tool or technology to help you achieve your goals? Do they help, or are they just more baggage? Leave a comment below, and we’ll discuss.