“Type faster”

Post started: 02:15

Had a strange experience at work today: someone, whose name shall remain Kimota94 aka Matt, told me via IM that you may be the World’s Slowest Typist.

Why is that strange? Because I type really quickly and accurately, to the point where I get regular comments about how fast my fingers move. I got kicked out of my Grade 9 keyboarding class because I was already touch-typing faster than the end-of-term goal thanks to my superior spelling ability (but that’s another story). Several years ago one of the admin assistants and I raced to see who’d come out faster; I don’t remember the exact result, which probably means I lost, but we were within one or two wpm of each other.

So why does K94aM think I’m a slow typist? I can think of a few reasons:

1. I’m not as fast as I used to be. Probably true, but not to the extent that anyone who’s not paying close attention would notice. I’ve also picked up some tricks along the way that people don’t recognize, like using cw in vi instead of hitting x repeatedly and then i.
2. I’m easily distracted. While I’m typing a message my mail notification will sound, or there’ll be a message on the intranet chat server, or I’ll hear something funny in the discussion behind me, and I’ll take a few seconds to acknowledge it and perhaps respond. Okay, okay, the discussion part is a straw man; Mike will confirm that I’ve got a near-legendary reputation for being able to ignore anything going on in my office unless someone says my name.
3. I’m a slow thinker. True in certain situations; I often like to ponder over ideas before saying anything rather than blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. However, our discussion at the time didn’t involve much in the way of deep thought.
4. The instant-messaging software we use shows when the person on the other end starts and stops typing. I wonder if the perception would be any different if I disabled that so my messages would simply appear, fully-formed, when I finally deign to press Enter.
5. I edit and rewrite and reread everything. This is the key, I think. J’aime le mot juste, and I’m constantly looking to see if a sentence doesn’t flow or if there’s a better way to phrase something; I regularly delete the entire message I’ve typed and start over. This probably also helps to explain why my blog output is low—in the time it’s taken me to rewrite this post Matt probably would have written four or five of similar length—and why the simple act of writing a three-paragraph email to a friend sometimes takes hours.

That last point may also explain my reduced reading speed: instead of reading for content, I find myself reading for grammar, spelling and punctuation. I’ve given up completely on a few books because of their atrocious editing (or, more accurately, lack of same) and when asked to read over a document at work I’ll sometimes wind up rewriting large portions because of something that irks me.

(The title of this post, of course, is Isaac Asimov’s famous reply to the question of what he would do if he found out he only had six months to live.)

Post finished: 04:32