Typing for me has grown from a skill that I needed to learn regarding my career, to something that has drastically changed the way I get work done.
I have only been touch typing for less than a year now, and although I have been practicing way too much, I have found the benefits to be much worth the work.
Programming and Computer Science
The most obvious way this has helped me is in making me more productive in what I need to be good at for my field: working with computers and computer languages.
On the journey to improve my typing speed, I switched to Neovim as my editor. At first, it really did suck because of how poor my typing was, but after a month of switching between Neovim and Vscode, I finally felt as though I had become confident in my Vim abilities.
Since then, it has not only matched my performance on VS Code, but has easily tripled it. Working with my keyboard only while I edit code is an order of magnitude faster and more straightforward than I could have imagined it to be. Not only have I become a faster programmer, but it has also become an almost subconscious process for me, where I can work with my computer in a way where my hands kind of just move themselves.
Writing
The other big thing this has done for me is how it has made me into more of a writer.
In the age of language models it has become far too easy to just let a LLM do the writing for you, but I have felt as though it just felt too dry, even if its efficient. While I still do leverage LLM’s in my workflow, I have found i enjoy writing myself much more, and want to still be able to do that.
Writing has also become a huge part of my productivity workflow. By writing a ton of notes and journaling every day, I have found that my incoherent mess of a mind has become more organized. I am able to track my OCD-like tendencies, keeping track of tasks I want to do without letting them distract me from my work.
It has also allowed me to actually enjoy the process of working, as there is nothing more fun than being able to sit down and write a note on something I have been thinking about. And, as an added benefit, I am cataloguing my thoughts and my mind in a way that I never have before, where other people can have a look into what I like to think about and whatnot.