Learn touch typing – it's worth it

Summary

This is a short, personal story about my typing journey I started learning touch typing near the end of my first year of computer science. This was my second degree as I had already done engineering before. I wasn't able to get a tech internship the first summer after one year of computer science despite countless applications and thoughtful DMs to recruiters. I started working for a tiling company as a labourer - it paid well and I'm glad I received this job - it was through a family friend and sometimes a job outside your career path can teach you a lot. I was working pretty long hours most days and tile work is not easy; most physical trade jobs aren't. Each morning I made plans to study some programming topic after work to keep my skills up but after coming home from a 10hr+ shift doing tough physical work, all I wanted to do was eat and sleep. It was very rare that I had the energy to study programming - I didn't have the mental capacity for it. However, typing practice doesn't require mental capacity. You just turn your brain off, stare at a screen, blast music and type words you see on the screen. It's like meditation (in a way). It just takes 10-15 minutes a day to see good results so if I could do it, with my exhausted and beat up hands after a long day of physical work, then I'm pretty sure most people can find the time and energy to practice daily as well. Again, it takes very little time to improve. When I did start learning touch typing, it was brutal at first. I had to change my habits completely. Without a proper finger placement, my typing was some horrid version of pick-and-peck, look down frequently, etc. I made so many mistakes while typing as well - accuracy was consistently around 75% and my speed was around 30wpm. I was awful at typing. I had to look down on the keyboard for any numbers or symbols or even uncommon letters like z or q. Getting in the habit of not looking down is critical by the way - this is why I hired an illustrator to create ...