How to type without looking at your keyboard?
Typing without looking at your keyboard is a very useful skill. It lets you finally take your eyes off the keyboard and focus on the thing you are doing.
It’s like when playing video games – you don’t want to look at your keyboard, you want to look at the game. Looking at your monitor with the game on is fun, not looking for the keys to press below.
The same thing works when it comes to writing on the computer. You don’t want to be looking at your keyboard – at all. You need to put all your focus on the poem, book, or work that you are doing.
That’s when you have real productivity. Today I will teach you how to learn this useful skill to never look at your keyboard again.
Can you type without looking at your keyboard?
Let’s start with the simple question – can you even type on your keyboard without looking at all? There’s no point in learning this skill if you aren’t able to use it.
Are there any special layouts that make typing with no looking possible? Or is it just a skill that you can master on any keyboard?
Firstly I will say that typing without looking is not a stand-alone skill. It is very well connected with touch typing and some other fast typing techniques. But I will mainly focus on touch typing. It is a pretty well-known and reliable technique tested by tons of great typists.
If you don’t know what touch typing is, I recommend you to check out my article. It’s all about touch typing for people who never heard it before. You can read it here – ARTICLE WHAT IS TOUCH TYPING
Typing without looking is possible when you learn the touch typing technique. It is not too hard to learn. But you certainly need to memorize the layout in order to type without looking. You can’t just guess where the right key is.
Answering the question – can you type without looking at your keyboard?
You certainly can learn to type without looking at your keyboard. It required you to memorize your layout and learn the touch typing technique, which can be slightly challenging. But with the right resources, you can learn it easily. The best side is that it’s possible on every keyboard and every layout.
It is for sure possible to type without looking at your keyboard. I type like that all the time and I can’t say just how great it is. Actually, I talk about the benefits of typing without looking later in the article, so stay around.
Can you type with your eyes closed?
Another question is whether or not you can type with your eyes closed. It is a slightly different question than the one above. I tell you from my experience – typing without looking at your keyboard and typing with your eyes closed is different.
It is quite odd but typing with your eyes closed is more difficult than without looking at the keyboard. And there is a reason for this.
When you type with your eyes closed you don’t look at the monitor. You don’t see what you are typing. That makes typing with your eyes closed slightly more challenging. When you close your eyes all you see is black. Well, you obviously know what you see when you close your eyes.
So going back to the question – is it possible to close your eyes and type?
You can type with your eyes closed. It is similar to typing without looking at your keyboard. You still rely on your muscle memory when typing. The only difference is that you don’t see the screen and don’t know what you’ve actually typed. That means you don’t see the mistakes you made, you need very high accuracy.
It is possible, but is it practical? Maybe sometimes when you just want to focus on putting the words out there. Don’t care about accuracy, just want to write down your idea with as much focus as possible. Then it might actually come in handy.
If you want to learn to type with your eyes closed then don’t worry. It’s just like learning to type without looking at your keyboard. Because it pretty much is typing without looking down at the keyboard. You just close your eyes when you do that.
If you want to learn it you can check out my article about touch typing. It will tell you what this method of typing is about. You can read it here – ARTICLE WHAT IS TOUCH TYPING
Is it bad to look at your keyboard when typing?
This is not a question that you can answer with one quick sentence. It depends on what your goal is when typing.
Looking at your keyboard when typing is not certainly a bad thing. If you type on your computer casually and press those keys from time to time then it’s completely alright to look at the keyboard.
I can type without looking at my keyboard and still I sometimes look. For example, when watching a movie I look at the keyboard to press just one key. When I use my computer for relaxing there’s no point to get into the touch typing position.
It all depends on what you are doing. If you are using your computer casually then don’t worry about not looking at the keyboard. When you want to work or write your own book on the computer – that’s when you can consider not looking at the keyboard.
Let’s start with the most obvious thing. When you look down on your keyboard, you don’t see the screen. You need to constantly look down at the keyboard, then back up, again down, and so on. It is very tiring in the long run and can even cause you a health issue.
When you constantly look down at your keyboard also your work becomes much less productive. You can lose a lot of focus and energy just thinking about what key you need to press next. It’s not something you want to be doing.
With all that said let’s sum everything up in a few sentences. Is it bad to look at your keyboard? Should you never look at the keyboard?
Looking at your keyboard when typing results in less focus, worse productivity, and makes you tired faster. It is definitely bad to look at your keyboard when typing if you are spending your time at work. But if you are using your computer casually then it’s alright to look down at your keyboard. It makes no real difference.
The only reason you would want not to look at the keyboard during using a computer to relax is for health. If you spend too much time looking up at the screen and down at the keyboard it might result in some health issues.
But at this point, you would also have health issues from things like bad position or just too much time sitting. You shouldn’t care too much, especially if you’re using the computer in healthy amounts.
How to type without looking at your keyboard?
Typing without looking at the keyboard is a skill. It relies on muscle memory to work properly. In more detail, it depends on your typing technique and whether or not it contains memorizing the layout.
You need to be able to type the words you want to type just from the memory of your fingers. You need to learn the movement that is required on your own layout to type without looking.
It sounds complicated, but you don’t really need to spend your time thinking. I will give you the technique you need. With it, you will be able to type without looking at all at your keyboard.
This secret technique is touch typing. It is the way of typing on your keyboard that makes use of all the ten fingers you have.
Typing without looking at your keyboard is a complex skill to learn. However, it’s not a stand-alone skill. You need to learn the proper typing technique in order to type without looking. For that, the best is touch typing. It is slightly challenging to learn but with the right resources, you can do it effectively.
Touch typing makes use of muscle memory to make you remember the way to type words. That way you don’t even need to look at the keyboard to type and that’s what we want.
To learn touch typing you need to memorize the layout you have. Next, you need to learn the placement of the keys not only by heart but also with muscle memory. Finally, you need to learn to type the whole word.
It’s obviously a lot to do. That’s why I made a whole article about the basics of touch typing. You can learn about those important fundamentals here – ARTICLE TOUCH TYPING BASICS
How to stop yourself from looking at your keyboard?
Typing without looking at your keyboard can be very hard. Especially when you didn’t develop yet the required muscle memory for that skill. You might face the temptation of looking down at the keyboard each time you want to type a word.
That makes the whole learning experience so much harder and less enjoyable. It also slows down your progress significantly. This is really not what you want to happen.
There has to be something we can do to at least minimize the temptation or even completely get rid of it. And luckily there is. There are plenty of ways in which we can make sure that we don’t look at the keyboard.
Stopping yourself from looking at your keyboard requires you to remove the option of looking at the keyboard. Once you do that the temptation will also pretty much disappear. The simplest way for it is to cover your keyboard with a cloth. However, there are plenty of other ways to disallow yourself from looking at the keyboard.
Those ways are a lot of times very intuitive. I’m sure you can come up with at least two or three yourselves. But I will not leave you just to your ideas. I made a whole article that you can learn a lot from about typing without looking at your keyboard. You can read it here – ARTICLE HOW TO TYPE WITHOUT LOOKING
What are the bumps on the keyboard for?
You might have noticed the small bumps on your keyboard. There are two keys in particular that have those bumps. Have you wondered what they are for?
When you look down at your keyboard those bumps should be on the letters F and J. These are the middle keys on the QWERTY layout. So if your keyboard has this layout printed on (like most of the keyboards) then bumps are on J and F.
If you have a different layout printed on your keyboard then those bumps will be on different letters. But still, they will be in the same place.
But let’s not drift from the question. We established that the bumps have a fixed place in the middle of the keyboard.
Bumps on your keyboard let you place your fingers in the correct place. They are very helpful especially for typing without looking at your keyboard. Those bumps have a fixed place on the keyboard in the middle row and indicate the placement of your index fingers.
You need bumps on your keyboard to be able to type without looking. A lot of times when you take your hand off the keyboard you would be lost. Because of the bumps, you can feel which key is the one for your left index finger and which for your right index finger.
What are the benefits of typing without looking at your keyboard?
I wrote a whole article about typing without looking, talking about different aspects of it, and saying how to learn this skill. But there’s one thing I didn’t talk about – why is it even worth learning? How is typing without looking at your keyboard well? What will you get from it?
Learning to type without looking is challenging. So why would you put in all this effort and time?
The answer is – because of what you get. The benefits are really worth it. That’s why typing without looking is so important:
Typing without looking gives you great benefits. By learning this skill you memorize your keyboard and develop the muscle memory to type. Because of that, you get a lot of benefits. Some of them are typing much faster with fewer mistakes and have better comfort (when you no longer need to look up and down all the time).
Let’s make that list a little bit longer. These are most of the benefits that you will get:
- First of all – the typing speed. By typing without looking you free your mind and rely on the muscle memory that you build. It means that your response will be much faster than you could ever keep up with thinking.
- Second – is the comfort of typing. You no longer need to look down at your keyboard. You can have a good relaxed posture.
- Third – the better productivity and higher focus. Because you don’t need to look down at your keyboard every few seconds you free your mind from this task. That enables you to focus better on the stuff that you are doing.
- Fourth – you get less tired from typing. You not only are more focused but you are also less tired. The muscle memory that you develop takes over your typing and you no longer need to think about it. That just lovers a load of tasks on your brain.
- Fifth – you can correct your mistakes right away. Because you are looking just at your screen you can see what you are typing. That makes you notice the typos you make right away.
There are even more benefits to typing without looking. I’m sure you will also have your own once you learn this skill. From my own experience, I tell you – it’s really worth it.
