How to Break Through a Typing Speed Plateau

Almost every typist improves quickly at first and then stops. You practise, the number on the screen stays where it was a month ago, and it starts to feel like you have reached your limit. In nearly every case you have not. A plateau usually means that the kind of practice that got you here has stopped teaching you anything new.

Why speed stalls

When you learn a skill, you get better until you are good enough for your daily needs, and then the skill goes on autopilot. From that point, more hours of the same activity mostly repeat what you already do. Someone can type email for ten years and stay at 45 WPM for all ten.

Typing tests can make this worse. If you take the same one minute test again and again at your comfortable speed, you are measuring your skill, not building it. Improvement comes from working at the edge of what you can do, on the specific things you do badly, and that feels less pleasant than a clean run at your usual pace.

First, find what is holding you back

Take three or four tests and look past the WPM figure. One of these patterns will usually stand out.

• Accuracy under 95 percent. You are fast enough already, but corrections are eating your speed. Every fixed mistake costs several keystrokes.
• A few slow keys. You fly through common words and stall on anything with q, z, x, numbers or punctuation.
• Hesitation between words. Your fingers are quick inside a word, but you stop to read the next one.
• Looking down. You still glance at the keys for some characters, which breaks your rhythm every time.
• Tension. Your shoulders rise and your hands tighten when you try to go fast, and you tire after a minute.

Each of these needs a different fix. Practising "more" without knowing which one applies is the main reason plateaus last.

Fixes that work

Slow down to speed up

If accuracy is the problem, spend a week typing at about 80 percent of your normal speed with a target of 98 percent accuracy or better. This feels like going backwards. What it does is replace the shaky, half learned movements with clean ones, and clean movements are the only kind that can be made faster later.

Drill the weak keys

Write down the letters and combinations that slow you, and build short practice texts around them. Five minutes on words full of your worst letters does more than thirty minutes of ordinary text, because ordinary text contains very few of them.

Read ahead

Fast typists keep their eyes one or two words in front of the word their fingers are typing. If you read a word only when you reach it, you pause at every space. Practise deliberately looking ahead, slowly at first. The pauses between words shrink, and the typing becomes even.

Practise in bursts

Pick a short phrase and type it as fast as you can, several times, well above your normal speed. Mistakes are fine here. The aim is to show your hands what a higher speed feels like. Then go back to normal text. Alternate bursts with careful, accurate typing, never one without the other.

Change the material

If you always practise on the same kind of text, switch. Use longer tests, text with punctuation and capitals, numbers, or a subject with unfamiliar vocabulary. A new kind of difficulty forces attention back on, which is exactly what autopilot removes.

Relax

Speed comes from loose hands. Drop your shoulders, keep your wrists level and press the keys only as hard as needed. If you notice your hands tightening, stop for ten seconds and shake them out.

A four week plan

Fifteen minutes a day is enough.

• Week 1: accuracy. Type slowly. Target 98 percent. Ignore the WPM figure completely.
• Week 2: weak keys. Five minutes of drills on your worst keys, then ten minutes of normal text at a comfortable pace.
• Week 3: bursts. Five minutes of short, fast phrases, then ten minutes of normal text while reading ahead.
• Week 4: longer tests. Three and five minute tests on varied text, aiming to hold your pace to the end.

At the end of the fourth week, take three one minute tests and average them. Compare with the average you started with.

Measure it properly

A single test tells you little. Speed varies from run to run by five WPM or more depending on the words that come up. Compare weekly averages on the same test length, and keep a simple record. A plateau often turns out to be slow progress hidden by daily noise.

Expect improvement to arrive in steps. Typing speed tends to sit still for a while and then jump, often after a few days off. A week with no gain is not evidence that the plan has failed.

When the plateau is fine

Past about 60 to 70 WPM, typing is rarely what limits your work. Thinking is. If you are at that level, comfortable and accurate, there may be more to gain from learning keyboard shortcuts or from better posture than from another ten WPM. Decide what you want the speed for, and practise for that.