How do people type so fast?

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I got started early.

And being fast at typing made it even easier to indulge my computer-related hobbies.

What's kind of funny is watching the reactions of people from China when they see a Westerner typing on a Wubi keyboard. For some reason, they have this nearly universal belief that Wubi is "too hard" for a Westerner to ever learn. In reality, it's the opposite. If you know how to write a character, but not how to speak it, you CAN'T use Pinyin-based IMEs, but anyone who understands stroke order & radicals can learn to type with the numeric keypad using Wubihua, and anybody who has to type a lot of Chinese and understands the writing system (but not necessarily the spoken language) can learn Wubizixing in a few months. What's really funny is that there are some characters I can easily type, but not write, and can only read with difficulty & have to think about (because I know the sequence of keys to hit on the keyboard, but don't necessarily know "cold" the full character's strokes).

Then again, being able to write (and sort of read) Chinese without really understanding (much) of the spoken language (Mandarin) seems to be almost exclusively an "Aspie" thing. I've met a few other guys who can write & read Chinese without really being able to speak it, and they were all overwhelmingly likely to be Aspies, too. I just kind of learned to read & write Chinese by pretending it's an alternate way to write English (kind of like the way Japanese uses Kanji and Romaji).

I don't type very fast, but it's because my fingers are too short to reach some of the keys if I use conventional typing, so I type in a way that works but is pretty slow.

http://www.upsidedowntext.com/

I never practiced my typing, yet I can touch-type and reach about 80-140 WPMs depending on the text.

I have used computers since I was a child, and I have been typing a lot in games and for school. I still remember typing with my two indexes while looking at the keyboard. I still do not use all ten fingers. Specifically, my little finger only every touches the right Shift button. I still main use index and middle fingers of both hands, and left thumb for my space. If you actually did exercises tailored for typing practice, I think you could learn to be way more effective than me.

TL;DR Practice, as with anything else. It mainly comes down to practice. Lots of it.

It just requires practice and a lot of patience. You can download programs for teaching yourself how to type quickly. I always hated using them; they may help some people.

I type at high speeds but not strictly using the "normal home row techniques" or whatever they teach in elementary school. The fact that I pressed a certain letter with one finger instead of another drove my teacher nuts.

Work at an inbound call center with a high call volume and short call times. You won't have time to look at the keys when typing in your notes if you want a good call time. This is how I learned to touch type.

I type exceptionally fast (though I am prone to making typos). I've always attributed this to two facts. The first is that I almost always choose typing over writing something down on paper because I can easily email it to myself to read or edit anywhere at a later time. This is also why my handwriting is terrible. However, the fact that I have such terrible handwriting just serves as another reason to type everything.

The second is that I spend a ton of time in chat rooms. When everything you want to say to someone has to be typed out, you're prone to giving long, detailed explanations and you want the other person/people to recieve what you're trying to tell them before they start doing something else IRL or flip to another window because they got bored, you learn to type very quickly.

Try finding people with short attenton spans and inviting them to private chats.