Touch-Type With Your Thumbs

Are you cursed with fat, slow thumbs? Now that mini-keyboards are ubiquitous, being a mediocre thumb typist is a 21st century handicap. But what if your highly evolved opposable thumbs just don’t want to cooperate? Here’s a three-step self-improvement plan.

STEP 1. Learn the landmarks of your device, without looking. Cradle your keyboard between your hands and let your thumbs find their way. Can you find the space bar, return/enter and backspace keys? Now try while looking at the screen instead of your fingers.

STEP 2. Master the shortcuts. Did you know that  — on most devices — a quick double-tap on the space bar will generate a period at the end of a sentence? There are dozens more of these time-savers hidden in your Android-based phone, iPod Touch or iPhone, Blackberry or other device, making this one of those rare times when it actually pays these read these directions:

•  Android. See PCWorld’s “All The Hotkeys You Need.” YouTube is loaded with keyboarding gems, like “How to use your Android Nexus One” or the more specific, “How to do a fast scroll.”
• Blackberry. Several sites have useful touch-typing guides, including a set of exercises. CNet TV offers a handy video tutorial.

• iPhone and iPod Touch. Visit Apple’s online set of shortcuts where you are reminded to turn the screen horizontally to make the keyboard larger if you have an extensive typing job. Try pressing a specific key longer longer, and a subset of alternative characters pops up.

STEP 3. Practice. Thumb-typing, like playing the guitar or dancing the Argentine tango, is a repetitive skill that uses muscle memory. That only develops one way: by repeating the same pattern, over and over and over. Start by sending yourself a long e-mail, full of easy-to-type words like your name, your e-mail address and your phone number. There are also hundreds of free or cheap typing games, where you race to type words that fall down the screen, Tetris-style. I found no less than 116 on Apple’s App Store (See, for example Finger Maniac (99 cents) or Monster Typer (99 cents); for Blackberry there’s Numb Thumb ($2.99).

The first creature to use thumbs to get to ahead in the Darwinian survival race is said to be the appropriately named Darwinius masillae, a lemur-like creature that used its new opposable thumbs to gather fruit while hanging onto tree branches. So perhaps it’s the logical next step of human evolution that after 47 million years, the individuals with the nimblest thumbs will get the best dinner reservation.