You don't have to type faster to type faster.
It's true.
If you look up "how to type faster" on Google, you're bound to come across countless articles that typically either suggest changing from QWERTY to Dvorak, getting a different/better keyboard, exploring touch typing, or taking a bunch of typing speed tests for practice. Or all of the above.
I'm not gonna knock any of that, and I think all of those things have their use and value for sure - I just think they have a pretty low ceiling in terms of how much they can improve things. I mean, ever since I switched to my beloved Leopold FC980C keyboard (w/ Topre 45g switches btw), typing has never been a more enjoyable experience for me. Like, I specifically create reasons to type with this thing. Did it really increase my typing speed to any appreciable degree though? Maybe a teensy little bit, but overall, I don't really think so.
But I digress. We all know the old "work smarter, not harder" axiom. Well, believe it or not it applies to typing too. It might not seem obvious at first, but you actually can work type smarter, not harder.
Spoiler alert, it's the current year, and there's a way to type things without actually having to type the entire thing. Sort of like AutoCorrect in Word, but something that works in all apps, not just Word (and has a lot more features).
It's called a text expander. The way it works is pretty simple:
- Input something you type often.
- Assign a shorter abbreviation to it (that you'd rather type instead from now on).
- In the future, whenever you want to type the longer thing, just type the shorter thing (the abbreviation).
Here's how that might look:
So then, whenever you type the shorter thing (aka the abbreviation), it'll be replaced and typed out for you instantly. In any app.
What most people don't realize - or maybe they do, but don't know how to go about solving the problem - is that a huge portion of the things we type, day in and day out, are repetitive. Usernames. URLs. Code snippets. Email responses & signatures. Typos. Resume submission follow-ups. Reminders. Copypasta. EHR/EMR medical transcription / law terminology. I could go on. Is there really any point in manually typing these things out in full, over and over again day in and day out, when it can easily be avoided, with no downside?
To me the answer is an emphatic "no". And look, obviously you shouldn't abbreviate everything. Like, you probably shouldn't use this to write out a love letter for example. Because, well, you know... a love letter is supposed to be from the heart, written on demand, not reused over and over. So yeah, don't do that, please.
But for everything else?
Go for it. Save some time. Type faster. Without having to type faster. With a text expander.