How can I refrain myself from looking at the keyboard?

All About Touch Typing
1

During my practice, I can’t stop looking at the keyboard which makes it harder for me to familiarize the positions of the keys. Do you know any technique to avoid such?

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HI Samah,

One of the best ways to learn touch typing is to use a keyboard cover. Many of the benefits of touch typing come from not looking at the keyboard while typing. For beginners, this can be a daunting process. It is difficult to resist the temptation to look for the keys, so covering it up completely can be helpful.

Thanks, and I hope that helped.

Best Regards,
Aidan Bernales
Community Moderator at Typesy

3

Hello, @samahfinley!

Our brains are designed to automatically fix easy problems without us having to consciously think about them - for example, when your brain realizes you’re struggling to remember the placement of a key, it will “fix” this problem by moving your eyes to look. Even if you’re doing everything you can to actively avoid looking, your brain has been taught to help out! :smile:

A vast majority of the time, the nature of how our brains work is a good thing. When trying to learn how to touch type, not so much…

The suggestion to cover your keyboard is a great idea! That way, even though your eyes might slip onto the keyboard, it won’t help anyway. If you don’t have ready access to a keyboard cover, you can also try blindfolding yourself. This makes it a bit more difficult as it really relies on your ability to know the layout of the keys. If you try it this way, I’m sure you’ll become very familiar with the F and J keys. Those are the two keys that will often have raised ridges. These markers indicate where the index fingers should be placed on the home row, so you can feel your way back to home row rather than needing to look at the keyboard directly.

And always remember - it’s totally normal to be VERY challenged by this process! Committing a skill to muscle memory is no easy task, so stick with it!

Regards,
Alex (The Reimagined Classroom Teacher)

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Thanks for bringing up the topic @samahfinley !!!
And @ABernales and @Alex thanks for the great information !!!

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