5 Bad Habits That Slow Your Typing Down

Stop sabotaging your WPM with common mistakes like looking at the keys or improper finger placement. Learn how to identify and fix these five critical typing habits today.

1. Looking at the Keyboard

The most common habit that prevents speed is 'hunting and pecking'—looking down at the keyboard to find letters. This creates a cognitive bottleneck because your brain has to switch focus between the screen and your hands.

To break this, force yourself to keep your eyes on the screen, even if it means making more mistakes initially. Your muscle memory will never develop if your eyes are doing the work for your fingers. Use tactile markers like the nibs on the 'F' and 'J' keys to reorient yourself without looking down.

2. Not Using All Ten Fingers

Many self-taught typists rely heavily on their index and middle fingers, leaving their ring and pinky fingers idle. By only using four or six fingers, you are forcing your hands to travel much further across the board.

Incorporate all ten fingers by adhering to the home row method. Your pinkies should be responsible for keys like 'Q', 'A', 'Z', 'P', and the Shift keys. While it feels weak at first, using all ten fingers reduces the 'travel distance' of your hands, which is the physiological key to high-speed typing.

3. Over-reliance on the Backspace Key

If you find yourself hitting the Backspace key every few words, your speed will never reach its potential. Rapidly typing a word and then correcting it is significantly slower than typing the word correctly at a moderate pace.

Slow down until your accuracy hits 98%. It is much easier to speed up a correct motion than it is to unlearn a wrong one. Rhythm is more important than raw speed; try to maintain a steady 'tap-tap-tap' cadence rather than bursts of speed followed by long pauses for corrections.