How long does it take to learn touch typing? – detailed analysis

Touch typing is a skill that you need to learn before you can start using it. It takes time and effort to do so. But how much time exactly?

What can you expect to start your touch typing journey right now? How soon will you be able to type using this method? Those are the questions I will answer in this article.

Let’s start with something that will determine the rest of our results. The very basics of time when it comes to learning touch typing:

How much time a day should you practice typing?

This is very important because it will determine everything else. Let’s talk realistically here – How much time can you actually spend on touch typing practice?

It might seem like an unimportant question but you need to answer this question for yourself – how much time can you withstand practicing every day? Four hours daily, one hour, half an hour? You might think you can easily practice for two hours every day.

Here’s a quick reality check for you – No, you can’t. Touch typing practice is not an easy task. It requires your full attention and a lot of thinking in order to do it effectively. You can practice for an hour daily maybe for a week. Then you will burn out.

Guess what will happen after that? Nothing. You won’t learn this skill even though you’ve spent so much time in the beginning.

Touch typing practice needs to be consistent. You need to practice every day in order to learn this typing method. Let me answer this question for you – how much time a day should you practice touch typing?

Touch typing is a demanding skill that requires a lot of effort to practice. Moreover, this typing method requires consistency in practice time. You aren’t able to spend 2 hours every day on practice. You will burn out very quickly and won’t archive your goal. You should practice for 15 – 30 minutes every day.

That’s it. Just 15 minutes. You don’t need to focus on the extremely long sessions. You don’t even need to spend much time learning overall if you have the right tools. Don’t get me wrong – you still need to put in effort and time. However, you should focus more on how you spend this time, and less on how much time you spend.

How long does it take to learn touch typing?

It is very useful before learning any skill to have a rough idea of how long it will take. Unfortunately, there’s no information about it in any free course. There’s one reason for that – it is hard to say.

There are many reasons why it would take you longer to learn touch typing. There are many ways to make learning this skill quicker and more effective.

Those aspects can change a lot when it comes to touch typing. What’s worse is that nobody on the internet describes their exact method of learning and the result they get.

However, I did some research. A lot of research. I’ve collected 450 different records from one of typing programs’ databases.

Then I did my best to get some useful information out of those records. It wasn’t easy. Many people progress in touch typing and then they get bored. So they stop practicing. That’s the graph that I got from the first polish of records:

Caption: This chart shows the average speed improvement in months of learning touch typing. It is a very rough estimation from practicing irregularly. This is the monthly average touch typing speed.

Using some of that data I created a much more useful chart that tells us how much time we need to learn touch typing. It is on the condition that our practice is regular and kinda effective.

In other words, it is when you practice regularly but without any particular learning method. Just using some basic free programs that let you learn touch typing.

Now that’s more like it! After some serious work with this data, I’ve got something that is a really good indicator. This can give you a good idea of how long it will take you to learn touch typing using free online tools.

I’m gonna take a bit more time to talk about this chart to avoid any confusion. The red line shows the highest score during a certain month. This is the absolute max that you can get in a quick test.

The blue line is what you should be looking at. This line shows the average typing speed in a certain month. It means that if your average speed is 100 WPM it is natural for you to type at that speed. This is what matters when it comes to real typing while working on your task.

Alright, that’s a lot of information. Now I will sum everything up for you. How long does it take to be good at touch typing? How long does it take to learn typing at 100 WPM? Here’s how long it takes:

Touch typing is an advanced typing technique that requires a lot of time and effort to learn. Starting from the very beginning it will take you around 10 months to get to 100 WPM (as the chart shows). It will take that long if you practice regularly using free online programs (without any better method of learning)

It is how long it takes with regular practice and free online tools to learn. Touch typing often gives a big sense of progress early on. It’s after some time that your improvement slows down and you can get discouraged.

But how fast you could learn touch typing with the proper resources and the right process? What if you had all the required knowledge and experience to learn touch typing as efficiently as you can? If that seems attractive to you then I have something for you. It’s my course about touch typing. You can read more details about it here – MY TOUCH TYPING COURSE

Can you learn touch typing in one day?

Is one day enough to learn such a complex typing method as touch typing? You should find it hard to believe from the very beginning.

It can be used as a slogan to sell something but don’t fool yourself. You can’t learn touch typing in one day, it’s not possible. Think about it for a while. If you were to use all of the time that you have in one day – without eating, sleeping, or anything else – you still would only have 24 hours.

Of course, the whole thing would be extremely unhealthy and devastating for your mental state. But we are only talking about whether it is in theory possible. If you are starting from the very beginning then no, it is not.

Well, what if you already have all the experience and knowledge? What if you’re just trying to learn a new keyboard layout?

Then it might be in theory possible. Not to a high extent. Something along the lines of 40 WPM. Still very unhealthy and not worth it. So let me conclude it that way:

Touch typing is an advanced typing technique that takes time to learn. You need to create needed muscle memory in order to even start typing. Even if it would be possible you would need to spend all the 24 hours practicing. That would be extremely unhealthy physically and mentally straining. You need more time as the graph shows.

We like to believe in those second tricks that will save us from having to put in the effort. But there’s no way around it. There’s no special machine that will do the work for you.

You have to spend time on practice in order to learn touch typing. And one day is definitely not enough time to spend.

Can you learn touch typing in one week?

Alright, you can’t learn touch typing in just one day. Expected. But what about the whole week? Can you learn touch typing from the beginning in just 7 days?

This sounds promising. It seems that one week could work. Plus spending just one week to master a skill that will save you a lot of time, later on, doesn’t seem that bad.

Well, here’s the bitter truth for you. You can’t master any complex skill in just one week. The reality is that learning touch typing takes time. Much more time than one week. Especially if you want to be really good at it.

Actually, you could learn touch typing in one week. To a very weak level which is slower than how you already type. Of course, if you had all the knowledge and experience. In other words – if you were just learning another layout.

Touch typing is a skill that requires time to learn. You have to put in effort in order to acquire this skill. Assuming that you won’t spend all 24h every day for a week (you physically wouldn’t be able to) you can’t learn touch typing in just one week. You need much more time to learn touch typing (as the graph shows).

There are way too many elements to learning touch typing. A small skill that you need to learn along the way in order to type using the touch typing technique. At some point, you even need to become good at reading as one of the skills. You can’t learn so much in only 7 days.

Can you learn touch typing in 10 days?

Is that little time enough to learn touch typing? You already know that 1 day isn’t. But 10 days is a lot more.

First, let’s set what „learn touch typing” means. Does it mean learning it from the very beginning or improving on your current level? It is learning touch typing, not improving. So I’m gonna assume learning from scratch.

When learning touch typing you first need to learn your keyboard layout. That alone takes up a lot of time. Then you need to practice a lot just to put that memory into real typing.

Touch typing is way too complex of a skill to learn in 10 days. It is possible to make a lot of progress in 10 days. However, you can’t learn touch typing in only 10 days. It takes much more time to improve your typing speed (as the graph shows).

You simply can’t learn touch typing this quickly. One month – possible but hard. Two months – more like it. But even two months will get you to more beginning stage speeds.

Touch typing is a great skill to learn but it simply takes time and effort to do so. You can’t expect to learn touch typing in either one day, 10 days, or even a whole month.