I Went From 45 WPM to 90 WPM: Here's What Actually Worked

Three years ago I tested my typing speed and clocked 45 words per minute. I had been using computers daily for over fifteen years and considered myself a reasonably fast typist. Forty-five words per minute told me otherwise. Today I consistently hit 88 to 92 words per minute. The jump came from two specific changes and about six weeks of deliberate, occasionally frustrating practice. Why Most People Plateau The typical self-taught typist develops a personal system that works well enough. Maybe you use six fingers instead of ten. Maybe you look down for certain keys and type the rest by feel. Whatever the system is, it gets you to 40 or 50 words per minute and then it stops improving. This plateau exists because your personal system has a speed ceiling built into it. If your right index finger handles eight keys instead of four, that finger becomes a bottleneck. At higher speeds, every wasted motion compounds. Most people never push past the plateau because 40 to 60 words per minute is