Typing progress in 2021

Now that 2021 is ending, I wanted to reflect on the only new year’s resolution I stuck to this year, and that is my goal of improving my typing speed and accuracy. I noticed that my typing was relatively quick but was pretty sloppy. So I searched online for websites that I could practice my typing on.

There were two websites that I mainly used this year:

1. TypeRacer

   I used TypeRacer to track my typing progress because they use text passages, which is more realistic to what I usually type in real life. I am also way less likely to restart a typing race because I don’t want to come across as a sore loser.

2. Monkeytype

   I used Monkeytype for typing drills. I love how heavily customisable the experience is. I like to give myself ASMR feels by pretending I have a mechanical keyboard with NK cream switches. I would practice typing quotes as well as typing the 1,000 most common English words.

Statistics

Here are the statistics for my typing progress this year on TypeRacer:

• Number of races completed = 700
• Fastest race = 124 WPM at 99.30% accuracy
• Number of times I reached 100% accuracy = 11
• Average speed of the first and last 100 races = 88.76 WPM and 98.16 WPM respectively
• Average accuracy about the first and last 100 races = 97.22% and 97.94% respectively

Tips

Here are some things I did when practicing typing:

1. Using Ctrl + Backspace to delete words when typing, rather than pressing the Backspace button multiple times.
2. I realise that I have short bursts of fast, accurate typing that sometimes exceed 130 WPM. When I feel like that burst is running out, I tell myself to slow down and calibrate because making mistakes can really throw me off.
3. Focusing on accuracy instead of speed. Sometimes I get surprised at how fast I typed because I thought slowing down would significantly decrease my WPM.
4. When I feel like I’m more mistakes than usual, I would sometimes turn on the blind mode on Monkeytype.