How to Get Better at Anything…
- Practice, practice, practice.
- Be willing to fail.
- Be able to get up and try again after you fail.
- Never, never, never give up.
The one skill that I am most proud of is my typing speed. I can type about 65wpm. That’s pretty good. It stops people in their tracks from time to time as they walk by my desk to stand and stare, and too often comment about how fast I type.
The truth is, I’m amazed too.
You see, I took typing as a freshman in high school. I was pretty motivated since at the time I hoped to grow up and become a
writer, or maybe a reporter some day. I thought typing would be a good thing to know how to do in that career. So I signed up and started class.
And luckily for me, the teacher really liked me. I wasn’t very good at typing. I got a D-. While I wasn’t good at typing, I was good at math, and I know that I didn’t actually earn that D! By the end of the semester I could type about 25 words a minute as long as I was looking at my fingers. When I looked at the book like I was supposed to I either slowed down to 10wpm or got so many errors that my net speed was less than zero.
I was the worst typist on the face of the earth… or at least in the running.
I took typing again in college. The course was graded on your ability to improve your typing speed. I got a B. Good thing the teacher warned us about going slow on the first timed test or I may have flunked again.
And again, I took a typing class at a trade school and dropped out before I got through the class.
And another trade school where I barely managed to get through the course with 30wpm. It was a self-paced course with about 30 classes. I spent as much time getting through that typing class as I did on all the others combined.
So how can I type so fast now?
When I was pregnant with my first child I spent the last few months of my pregnancy at home… playing “letter invaders.” It was a video game and it helped pass days that would otherwise have been boring. There were no teachers, no grades. Just an endless stream of alien ships dropping letters and words on Earth… with only me to protect the world.
One factor in my success was less pressure. I was just playing, so it didn’t matter if I failed. I could always start the game over. In fact, I could even manage to turn the computer off without saving and pretend the whole round never happened if I wanted to.
The other factor was practice. Practice, practice, and more practice. I spent at least 40 hours a week playing for about 3 months. And I was not typing 65 words a minute back then. I was averaging just over 40… the cut off point a lot of temp agencies had back then for administrative assistant jobs. I’d managed to get and even keep a few because I had other computer skills that compensated for my unfortunate fingers.
So I started working full-time in jobs that required typing. And gradually, over YEARS, my speed came up to the point that people walking down the hall will stop and stare at my fingers flying over the keyboard.
Typing may not be my most impressive skill. But it is the one I’m most proud of. That’s because I worked so hard to achieve it.
In everyone’s life, some things come easy and others barely come if at all.
One way to deal with that is to only pursue the things you are good at and give up on any interests that don’t come naturally to you.
The other way to deal with it is to pursue your dreams with the determination that you will keep trying no matter how many times you fail and find ways to overcome any road blocks.