Improve your typing

Whether you are exploring the internet for personal matters or writing code, proficiency in typing is vital for success. Being proficient is important since most of your time is spent either typing and/or scrolling. When you are skilled in typing you are able to optimize time by creating a more efficient workflow, therefore, accomplishing more. An experienced keyboardist will almost always have a better sense of navigation of where the keys are and their ability to familiarize themselves with keyboard shortcuts.

There are various ways to increase your skillset when typing, one of which includes the practice of memorization of keys. The idea, touch typing, “is based on the idea that each individual finger controls a certain section on the keyboard.“ When one puts this idea into effect their fingers may learn the locations of keys on a keyboard, in order to type solely off muscle memory. Muscle memory indicates that through repetition and practice of a task a person may successfully acquire a skill in that specific task.

Free Touch Typing Software

Having good posture when typing for an extended period of time could help stabilize your focus, thus, increasing productivity. For instance, sitting with a straight back will allow your bones and muscles to properly align themselves and alleviate strain, to further expand, you may also keep your elbows bent at a right angle and constraint from shifting your body weight to the wrist by leaning on them. You should also face the screen in a slightly tilted manner in order to keep a minimum distance of 45–70 cm between the screen and. your eyes. Putting these ideas into practice will assist comfortability and reduce strain.

An important skill that many experienced typists obtain is learning keyboard shortcuts. In computing, a keyboard shortcut is a preprogrammed action in which is invoked when a sequence of one or more keys are applied. The main purpose of keyboard shortcuts is to facilitate common operations by reducing input series into a few keystrokes. Some of the most frequently used shortcuts and one we should all know would be the {copy/cut/and paste} sequence. Having to retype text takes up unnecessary time, but it may also introduce mistakes that can cause issues and confusion later. Other important shortcuts which can be very useful, the undo(Cmd⌘ Z) and the redo(Cmd⌘ Shift Z), they are important for being able to undo a process which you may have done on accident or just wanting to return to a previous state at which you had it at.

Cmd⌘ X (cutting ), Cmd⌘ C(copying), Cmd⌘ V(pasting)

When it comes to coding it is effective to familiarize yourself with time-saving shortcuts to increase your productivity when using text-editors/IDE’S. In Visual Studio Code, there are some shortcuts we can familiarize ourselves with.

• Cmd⌘ \ split your screen up into multiple views, and from there you may even switch between the views you want to use by (⌘ + 1), the number being the view.
• Cmd⌘ P opens up a search bar where you can look up either a filename or a full path
• Cmd⌘ up|down takes you to the begging of the file/takes you to the end of a file
• Cmd⌘+ Left, Cmd⌘ + Right
  Go to the beginning of the current line, Go to the end of the current line
• Cmd⌘ F opens up a search bar where can search for a specific word within that file, once you have it selected if there are many you can switch back and forth between them using (⌘ G/⌘ Shift G ) or (Opt + Enter) to select all
• Opt Cmd⌘ F will allow you to search up a word within the file and also allow you to replace it with a new input
• Cmd⌘ Shift F opens up a search bar to search within all files and folders
• Shift Opt F will format the document and help with indentation
• ⌘N, Shift ⌘N,⌘S, Shift ⌘S, ⌘W
  open new file/opens a new window/save a file/save as file/close file
• Opt Shift F will toggle a window to fullscreen if it is not already so
• Cmd⌘ B toggles the sidebar visibility
• Cmd⌘ X, C when on an empty selection will cut/copy the whole line
• Cmd⌘ A selects everything on the page
• Opt up|down on empty selection will move just one line but when you select multiple lines it allows you to move them all at the same time
• Cmd⌘ / will comment out a single line but when multiple lines selected allows you to comment them all at once
• Opt + Click while holding opt down you may use your cursor and click wherever you want to select at
• Cmd⌘ Shift L selects all occurrences of the current selection
• Ctrl + `, Ctrl-Shift + `
  takes you to your current terminal/Create new terminal

There are many other shortcuts that can be used not only when coding but just when browsing around, that will expedite your goals and give you a satisfying experience. The ticket to being able to retain these and many other shortcuts is through repetition and implementation of them consistently, thus having you rely less on the mouse but rather focusing on your work, and in conjunction with touch typing, making it a smoother process to fulfill more.