If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will notice that the ticker under “Blog Stats” gained another digit on the left. This week, the blog reached 350,000 total hits! I want to take this milestone as an opportunity to thank you for your support since this website kicked off — to everyone who’s read, shared, liked, and commented on articles. As a reminder, you can make your guest post submissions using the following link.

For the 50 most recent posts, click here. For the complete archive of articles, click here. You can also view all interviews or transcripts.

Let me know any ideas you have to make the site better. Drop a note in the comments or you can access the contact form here.

Next update will come at the one million mark.

Today, I’m pleased to announce the release of my typing manual (~5k words) Be More Productive: Save 30 Minutes a Day by Learning The Art of Typing. You can purchase the Kindle edition on Amazon for $2.99! Check out the Table of Contents and Book Description down below!

Be More Productive: Save 30 Minutes a Day by Learning The Art of Typing Book Description:

Every age differs in its ability to store, create, and transmit information. Today, we are living in the computer age. The diffusion of digital technology has made it easier than ever to fulfill the basic communicative tasks on which civilization depends. In keeping with this evolution, demand for typing skills has risen exponentially during the last 20 years. Whereas typing was once a luxury, it is now a basic life skill that all modern people have an interest in developing.  

As someone who progressed from typing 30 words per minute (wpm) to 150+ wpm, I have witnessed firsthand how a faster typing speed can improve the quality of life. Faster typists save time, work efficiently, and deliver on their creative and intellectual potential. Indeed, the skill of typing is an especially tremendous asset for students, writers, programmers, translators, white collar workers, and people who otherwise spend a substantial amount of time online.   

Average typists with a median lifestyle can expect to double their typing speed and save 30 minutes per day by following the simple guidance of this short book. Thirty minutes a day, every day for a decade, amounts to a grand average of 1,825 hours. Multiply that by four, and the sum is 7,300 hours of time savings in a generation.

Whether you stand to gain more or less than 30 minutes per day by increasing your typing speed, this easy read, which will take about a half hour to knock out in its own right, is well worth the investment. And, as I will elaborate, the benefits of speedier typing go far beyond time.

Creator Villa

For more, see quotes.

People forget quickly, and once something has been forgotten, good luck retrieving it. No sense having to reinvent the wheel of our own imagination.

The same writing that enabled rapid technological progress during the last few centuries can help us progress intellectually in our private lives.

Creator Villa

For more, see quotes.

Our eyes evolved in spatious environments, where they are most relaxed. When our eyes relax, our mind relaxes. We work more efficiently and are better able to think creatively. Imitating a natural environment indoors can induce this effect.

Creator Villa

For more, see quotes.

For more on speed typing, see *NEW E-BOOK RELEASE* Be More Productive: Save 30 Minutes a Day by Learning The Art of Typing. Like most people in their mid-twenties, I’ve already spent thousands of hours on a computer. Typing out assignments in high school, undergraduate, and graduate school. Taking notes. Spending time on social media. Surfing the web. Working a computer job, for a period of time, and now blogging. Typing is simply the fastest, most reliable way to translate words to paper. But it is not equally fast for everyone. One of the easiest ways to save time and energy as a student, professional, or hobbyist whose job entails computer work is to increase your typing speed.

Here is a simple example to illustrate my point. A typical day for me as a student consisted of lectures for 2 and a half hours. An average note-taker might type up 3 pages of notes in this span. Let’s say you have assigned readings at home, and you type another 1 page of notes for those. In college, it is very typical to average around 2 pages of writing assignments a day, between response journals, essays, research papers, etc. Add another 1 page if you count edits. People do not typically submit the first word they type up for an assignment.

An average double-spaced page is around 250 words. That brings us to ~250(3) + 250(1) + 250(3)=1750 words.

Let’s say you spend time on the computer throughout the day, Googling things, talking to friends, and hanging out on forums/blogs. We’ll add in an extra 750 words for this miscellaneous activity, which I think is a reasonable number for many people. 1750 + 750 = 2,500 words, or ~10 pages total, in a day.

The average typist clocks in around 40 word per minute (wpm) according to Google. In my example, that means an average typist spends (2,500 /40)= ~63 minutes a day typing.

An advanced typist can get 80 wpm, whereas exceptionally fast ones can exceed 100 wpm. An advanced typist, in my example, would spend ~32 minutes (2,500/80) a day typing, whereas an exceptionally fast typist would spend spend ~25 minutes (2,500/100). That adds up to 30 minutes and 40 minutes of time savings a day, respectively, just by being faster at typing.

Depending on their job/lifestyle, some people will save less time than that, while others will save a lot more (bloggers, computer professionals, prolific social media users, etc.). 

How To Increase Your Typing Speed

In high school, touch typing (no-look, using all 10 fingers) was like a superpower. Before typing classes were offered, I took it upon myself to print out a chart, color-coded by key and finger. After several long, at times frustrating, weeks of studying the chart and practicing with the keyboard, I achieved my goal. Rule #1 of a fast wpm: Don’t look at the keyboard. If you’re still looking at the keyboard or typing with two fingers (tisk tisk), you should start by memorizing the keyboard layout.

What’s your wpm? You can test your speed for free at Typing.com. This week, I clocked in at 137 WPM with 100% accuracy on the 1-minute test [147 WPM with 99% accuracy is my all-time best on Typing.com.] Using the example above, at 137 WPM I would have saved ~45 minutes in a day. I screen-recorded myself completing the test on 11.24.21. Check out the video, which I have embedded down below!

MonkeyType has a shorter test (~30 seconds) that gives you a detailed breakdown of character counts. My personal record on MonkeyType is 165 WPM with 100% accuracy (see video from 5.28.23!). TypeRush.com is also a really fun website to hone your typing skills in competitive fashion. The test is less than a minute so it’s similarly easier to achieve top speeds. My personal best on TypeRush is 155.87 WPM.

Finally, 10FastFingers.com is another popular 1-minute test. Every 5 characters counts as a word, so if you type 100 characters that will count as 20 words, regardless of how many actual words you typed. My personal best on 10FastFingers is 156 WPM with 99% accuracy.

Paper and the Cloud are better than the human brain at recalling information. The time and energy that goes into that process can be channeled into other pursuits.

“Better is a short pencil than a long memory.”

Creator Villa

For more quotes, click here.

There is an expression in Spanish, “Mejor un lápiz corto que una memoria larga.” Translation? A short pencil is better than a long memory.

Creator Villa

For more quotes, click here.

Whenever we blink—and close our eyes—our mind temporarily stops taking in visual information from the environment. My experience is that we can channel some of the brain energy used to seeing on something else—like a piece of information—which improves our ability to absorb it. People commonly close their eyes to increase focus (praying/meditation/love-making etc.) This is simply another application that occurred to me while studying.

Creator Villa

I identify as a night owl. The evenings are when I tend to be most relaxed and productive. I enjoy talking to friends, surfing the web, reading, meditating, and watching live sports into the wee hours of the morning. My current circumstances enable this lifestyle. However, I’ve also come to realize that there are powerful psychological benefits to waking up early.

When we wake up at the last possible minute before some obligation, or after we’ve exhausted every minute of sleep, we become passive players in life. Our circumstances and obligations bully us into doing things we would rather not. Waking up earlier than necessary changes the narrative. It communicates an embrace of the challenges and opportunities of life and transforms us from passive to active participants. There is a reason why most successful, high-energy, go-getter personality types tend to wake up early. Human beings have also evolved to be highly competitive and conscious of others. When we are awake in the morning while others are asleep, we often feel at a social advantage, and vice-versa.

Recently, I re-discovered a powerful life hack that started working for me almost instantly: intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting can be a powerful tool for waking up earlier and with better energy. My routine right now consists of me not consuming any calories after 3 or 4 PM. This creates a powerful incentive for me to go to bed earlier and rise earlier to fullfull nature’s most primal instinct. And it tends to have an energetic carry-over effect the rest of the day.

This routine may be difficult to execute, even for people who have extensive experience with intermittent fasting. I, for one, intermittent fasted for more than a year, and my feeding window was always sometime in the afternoon and evening. When I recently stopped eating in the evenings, I realized just how much I enjoy doing it, when all the work for the day is complete and my mind is in entertainment mode. The evening is also when I hang out with friends and family and like to socialize over a meal.

Abstinence requires forethought and discipline, especially when I know I’m going to be around people or engaged in some athletic activity. It means I have to be disciplined to eat enough calories during my feeding window to sustain me for the rest of the day and not to cave to the temptation to eat for pleasure when time, company, and good food are abundant.

Some say the only thing that matters is what you eat, not when you eat it. My experience leads me to believe otherwise.

Note: Fasting is not for everyone and you should do your due diligence and consult your doctor before beginning any fasting regiment.