My coworker has a split keyboard. It’s got lifting levers and more keys than labels. The clicks feel satisfying, or at least they seem to be. It looks like the kind of keyboard that would. He said it costs over $300.
I like the idea of using a fancy keyboard. You get to spend your days with something premium under your fingers. It’s the closest you can get to juggling jewels during the work day. People look at you strange if they see you doing that.
It’s not like I can’t afford a fancy keyboard, I just don’t think it would help me much. My keyboard of choice is the one built into my laptop. The trackpad does me fine as well. I’m quite good with my laptop keyboard, really.
Honestly, I would be worse with the split keyboard. I would need to relearn everything.
I never learned the correct way. You’ll find a bizarre combination of 4 fingers are in active use. That’s three fingers on my right hand and one on my left. Yes, it looks as odd as it sounds.
Despite all this, I regularly reach a respectable 115WPM on Monkeytype.
There’s some room for improvement. I could make fewer mistakes. I could be faster. I’ll never get on any company leaderboard, but it’s plenty fast for anything relevant.
I just type weird. That’s what happens if you’re self-taught, I used to think. But then aren’t most people?
Maybe it’s some weird quirk of transitioning from “hunt and peck” to a faster version of the same technique. My hands need to physically move around the keyboard a whole lot more. I think it helps with arthritis. Or maybe it worsens my chances. That’s unclear.
But something keeps nagging at me. Is this really as fast as I need to be?
Writing does something to you. I don’t write the way I talk and I don’t text the way I type. The way you communicate can subtly or less subtly change what you communicate. Yet, all communication has the same upper bound.
My favorite linguistics fun fact is about constant information rate. Spanish is spoken faster than Mandarin Chinese because Spanish has less information per syllable. We speak around 39 bits per second, speeding up or slowing down to compensate for the density of the content.
That means your speed of speech is not limited by the complexity of the sounds, but the density of the content. You talk as fast as you communicate.
What this means practically is that the fastest you’ll reasonably type is using voice-to-text.
Speak into your phone and you’ll do better than your fancy keyboard. You might have difficulty reaching 160WPM, but you can easily speak faster than 200WPM. I got up to 250 on one try.
Your writing will meaningfully change at that point. If we had vocal “keyboard” shortcuts, I’ll bet you could soar around the gmail interface like no other before you. You would do nothing, but you would faster at it.
I used to write articles with my voice. Having practiced speaking far more extensively than I practiced writing, it was a good crutch at the time. Words stopped looking as boring. I wrote them as if I were trying to hold my end of a barely interesting conversation, because I was.
So your writing speed changes at least something. But for the technical work, when you think more than you type - does it make any difference?
The common thought in my circles is no. That no one feels personally constrained by their typing speed so it must not matter. If typing faster is not the unlock to improving my work, it is not a desirable attribute.
But it does change something.
The years as they went changed not just the tools regularly available but our relationship to tool use. The hammer is made strong and your phone is delicate. You wouldn’t chuck your phone into a toolbox more than you would bring a hammer into the bathroom stall.
I write a lot more on my laptop than I do on my phone. My phone is around a lot more often, so you’d think the stats would flip at some point. Writing just isn’t much fun on the phone.
But it’s really more than that. On the laptop I am connecting in a different way. My hands don’t obscure the screen while I type. I feel like they almost disappear.
There’s a real fun fluency that comes with fully integrating into a tool or suite of tools. At some point your brain just moves through the space with your body following in tow. Instead of thinking to strum the guitar, you simply play music.
I keep to my laptop keyboard and trackpad because I’ve gained a similar extension of my body. My open windows flit around the screen with a combination of keys I don’t remember pressing. Applications I need suddenly appear as I need them. When I work, I flow.
What an addictive state. It feels absolutely enthralling.
There’s books on this. A friend tried getting me to read a popular one but I figure I have enough first hand experience to author a book like that myself.
Thinking about your tools while you use them is counter productive. As an extension of yourself, it becomes removed from active consideration. To consider it is to pay the cost of context switching.
Like how the evolution of melodies is harmed by hesitation, there is a real cost to the thoughts between the thoughts. To consider the tool is to take your mind away from the problem.
In more technical speak, you are paying the cost of the intervals between work by giving attention to them. Problem solving becomes more complex with a thicker thought space. Each time taking yourself away from the problem to address the tool is an added interruption to the flow of the task.
I know myself too well to over estimate my ability to compensate for this.
So you obsess over the machinery. You become the carpenter crafting the tools for tool creation - each made of the other. You become a toolmaker. Not just for merits of the obsession, but because it allows you a further fall into the flow of the craft.
We are the same, you and I. You are the creative or perhaps the self-identified thinker. You hate art or you estrange yourself from it. It matters little - we appreciate the same things. I will wager you enjoy doing a good job.
This is the art of it. Not the production, but the performance.
It is most always the worker that grants the value in the output, not the output itself. The motivations of the mason matter more than the curves edges of the marble. The chisel, motivated by the delivery of a product, is the art.
My typing speed isn’t where it should be. I don’t think I’ve reached the precipice of my performance.
Maybe I should look into a split keyboard.