Ask HN: What can I do about my declining typing ability as I age? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What can I do about my declining typing ability as I age?

38 pointsdeanebarker44 comments

As I've gotten older, my typing ability has decreased. I'm 51-years-old now, and have been typing non-stop since I got a computer in my 20s.

I used to type very naturally and easily, but in the last few years, I've noticed that I make a lot more mistakes. I spend a lot of time hitting backspace. It's not painful, I've just somehow gotten worse at it.

It doesn't seem to matter which keyboard I work on. I have a mild ergonomic keyboard for my desk machine (a slight curve), but I'm just as bad on this as I am on my laptop (perfectly straight).

Typing long stretches of text now is burdensome. I used to love to type (I've written four books, including an O'Reilly title), but now I tend to avoid it. I've started dictating, in fact.

I have no diagnosed arthritic or repetitive stress injury (and again, it's not painful).

Has anyone else experienced this? Any advice, coping mechanisms, or solutions?

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I'm 52 and I've noticed that I'm pulled away from typing and writing documents constantly. A lot more scrolling and answering emails in short sentences or single words. My theory is that, back when I was typing class notes constantly in grad school, or writing papers, or writing long documents, I didn't make mistakes like I often do now. So I believe it is not a sign of aging but instead a sign of a different set of typing requirements throughout the day, at least for me. A test would be to write a book and see if my typing improves. Perhaps I will try that.

This is a different age, but I think the same principle applies. When I was 20, I started getting issues from excessive keyboard usage. It stayed for 5 years even though I cut down substantially & tried massages. I ended up rock climbing and my issues went away with larger muscles. I’m in my 40s now and still use the same approach: where can I build muscle and make the pain subside. It doesn’t take much muscle, normally 3-6 months of practice @ 2x/week. The results normally stick pretty long, even when I back off the practice.

I have experienced similar issues before, where a lot of discomfort etc vanish with more physical exercise. For me that would be mostly push ups, pull ups, daily bike commuting etc.

I increased that a lot a few years back when I started bike commuting my 9km route to the office, and haven't had much of such issues since then. (Cycling seems to add quite some static exercise for hands and underarms)

Me too. I do chinups for this, no more pain.

Very interesting. I was going to make the same suggestion. Specifically bouldering since I think it's generally easier for folks to plug into their daily routines with the proliferation of gyms and not needing a significant amount of equipment. But three times per week bouldering has radically changed my body and hands for the better. I no longer have elbow or forearm/wrist pain that I used to experience quite frequently after typing for a long period.

I also want to mention that I am in my 40s and had never climbed before I started about 5 months ago. I just signed up to take an intro to bouldering course at a local gym and went from there. Additionally climbing is a very technical sport that involves a lot of problem solving which I find very appealing. Being overweight or out of shape shouldn't stop you from giving it a try, you might stay climbing lower grade problems longer than others but you will still find challenging physical and mental puzzles that you can complete.

55 here. Typing for 40+ years. No such issues.

My #1 suggestion: get a good keyboard. I use IBM Model M ones -- I hoarded 5 or 6 when people were throwing them out in the 1990s. None have needed repair, bolt-modding or anything. The one I am typing on right now is plugged directly into a PS/2 port on my Core i7 laptop's docking station: no convertor needed.

But if it is, convertors are something like £/€/$ 2-3. Look for one with 2 input ports -- that means it's not a passive device, which won't work: they need the keyboard (or mouse) to have onboard USB circuitry. Another giveaway is if they're coloured green or purple -- those ones mostly won't work.

Good attributes: 2 inputs; an activity LED; is beige or white. Bad attributes: 1 input; no LEDs; is green or purple.

I have tried a Unicomp recreated Model M and while it's a decent enough keyboard it's not as good as the real thing. Worth paying for proper, antique kit.

#2 suggestion: switch your mouse to your subordinate or non-dominant hand. I did this in my early 30s and it took workload off my dominant (left) hand, and made me improve my coordination with the other one. Also, learn to clean your teeth with your less-dextrous hand. Both encourage neuroplasticity and increased mental flexibility too, I suspect. :-)

I'm in my early 20's, and I started using an ergonomic keyboard just to stave off the RSI worries. I don't have any issues, but I've been able to type easily with much more accuracy on this keyboard. Row stagger (normal keyboard) makes you move your wrist. A small, column stagger keyboard with finger height adjusted columns reduces mistakes. I use a 42-key crkbd

https://i.redd.it/lfqcys91rg291.png

https://i.imgur.com/2fZyLxV.jpg

(images from reddit)

It's very easy on the hands and I never have to guess where my fingers are. It's also easy to learn, and you won't lose your row-stagger proficiency. It's like learning to type on your phone. If you change the ergonomics of the situation (cramping hands in the middle (regular keyboard) versus sitting upright with hands at shoulder width (split keyboard)) your brain will interpret it as a new, separate skill.

Also, the switches can be laptop-style or regular, and they are much smoother and easier to press. It'll take a month or two to really get up to speed but maybe abandoning a learnt skill is the way forward here.

Also, the firmware for these keyboards is painless - QMK now has a GUI (VIA).

Edit:

Switching to a better keyboard layout will also help. Colemak Mod-DH is MUCH better than QWERTY, and has the most-used letters on the home row and enables rolling motions.

https://colemakmods.github.io/mod-dh/

this is a random note since I know OP didn't mention RSI, but since you did, I will mention: gotta watch out for putting too much pressure on your elbows with armrests and such. I found this can cause trouble with your pinky finger (sometimes called ulnar tunnel, which is fairly different from carpal tunnel). a post I wrote https://cmdcolin.github.io/posts/2022-07-08-pinky

i've not yet started my ergonomic gadgets journey but just being aware of the elbow->hand connection has helped me

In my experience it does become harder to type on staggered keyboards unless you're continuing to do it regularly. You may need to relearn to do that. Same deal with continuing QWERTY usage.

VIA is proprietary and not really an official QMK thing (QMK is free software). There is also Vial[0] which is free software if you want a GUI, and the QMK configurator[1] web app (but this lacks some features like enabling mouse keys or NKRO).

Lastly I want to add that Workman[2] may be preferable to Colemak Mod-DH. Rather than an attempt to fix major issues in Colemak like Mod-DH, it's a whole new layout that avoided the issues from the start. I have also heard from some that it had ortholinear and columnar stagger boards in mind with its design.

I type on a Pinky4[3] keyboard that I assembled from a kit. More keys than your keyboard, but a similar idea. I was coming from a 60% and wanted a similar amount of keys. I've been quite happy with it.

[0] https://get.vial.today/

[1] https://config.qmk.fm/#/

[2] https://workmanlayout.org/

[3] https://github.com/tamanishi/Pinky4

> A small, column stagger keyboard...

A bit benefit to the esoteric keyboards like this is the ability to use your thumb for more keys, and being able to not have to use the pinky fingers as much.

A few other folks have mentioned exercise, but I will throw in my 2 cents:

* rock climbing is great (for myriad reasons), but it really forces you to use pretty much every muscle in your body. This is especially true for the muscles you use to actuate key presses, which are the primary gripping muscles in climbing

* use an erg (indoor rowing) machine. After long bouts on it (which is a fantastic low-impact cardio sport too), your grip / grasping muscles on the handle will strengthen a lot

* balance this out with some flexion motions, which one can do with yoga (e.g. think your hands during downward dog). If you don't have time for yoga, you can "habit hack" it into your life in easy ways: yin yoga is basically "holding yoga positions for a long time", and once you learn the basic positions it is easy to do them during a meeting (remote, via Zoom or whatever) or when you're watching something for leisure

Has your attention span or amount of focus changed, say as measured by ability to read many pages in a book in one go? Could your different subjective senses of reward have changed? Could you be slightly scatterred compared to before, and not as likely to make subtle performance-related observations and discoveries?

I took typing for one semester in high school, 57 years ago. Despite so many years of touch typing, I’ve never been a fast typist. I haven’t slowed down much, but I type around 45 WPM just as I did over 50 years ago. I’ve tried to type faster, but I think my hands are simply not very dexterous.

Because of my slow typing, I probably don’t notice any decline in ability compared to those that were unusually fast in their youth.

Depending on the type of work you do, perhaps a more powerful text editor would be useful. I would suggest Neovim or Emacs. Both are excellent in their own way and both have extensive facilities for handling auto completion of common phrases or markup text and use of abbreviations, etc.

Neovim is a modern version of an editor (vi) that has stood the test of time as one of the fastest editors for navigating over and manipulating text. Shifting between its different modes, each optimized for particular tasks, means it will take a couple of weeks if use to feel natural. The editor itself won’t increase your basic typing speed, but you will be able to fly though your documents correcting and rearranging words and sentences faster than any other tool out there.

Emacs is another ancient editor that is hard to master. Moving and editing text are out of the box a bit slower than Neovim, but the hundreds and hundreds of available packages and extensions make it a high power tool for managing any files or folders on your computer. Like the keys used in Neovim? Emacs can be configured to work the exact same way with a couple of packages. Need to rearrange your directories and rename a bunch of files? There’s really no file manager as good at this as Emacs. Outlines, agendas, check lists, bookkeeping, version control, taking dictation, editing 100 files at the same time, all of this is possible with Emacs. Basic Emacs is probably a bit easier to pick up than Neovim, but it will take time to settle on your own configuration composed of the packages you like best.

You don’t need to be a programmer to use either of these editors, but if you are, they can be easily tweaked to operate however you’d like. Both of them and the packages that expand their capabilities are open source. They run on MacOS, Windows, Linux and even other OS’s and cost nothing.

These editors may not increase your raw WPMs, but they may provide a platform that you will find almost as productive as before due to their many features.

I'm also 50+ and had issues with shooting pains along the back of my hands. My solution was to use a keyboard layout that reduces awkward finger movements. I tried some alternative keyboard layouts but wasn't happy with how hard they were to learn and ended up making my own[0] that ends on the Qwickly layout[1] that was easier to transition to compared to Colemak/Tarmak.

My error rate is probably still higher than using Qwerty but my hands are more comfortable so worth the tradeoff. I also learned that I don't type all that much while coding, spending much more time thinking than typing and had to use a practice site[2] to get enough practice to learn a new layout.

I'll 2nd that suggestion to get/use a mechanical keyboard. I personally had trouble with the ortho/grid layouts so use a custom layout on the standard staggered layout, YMMV.

[0] https://github.com/qwickly-org/QwickSteps

[1] https://github.com/qwickly-org/Qwickly

[2] https://www.keyhero.com/free-typing-test

You may want to have it checked out, cognitive/motor decline at your age is a bit unusual, unless you had a very sedentary lifestyle for most of your life up to this point or there's some specific ailment.

Poor cardiovascular health can cause a swath of problems as we age, so regular exercise is a must.

In terms of tooling, depending on what you type, anything with advanced auto complete (Google Docs for text, or an IDE for code) can help a lot.

I am older and have not noticed any (greater) problems, though I did notice that about 15 years ago the standard microsoft type keyboards that were everywhere and low travel membrane type were messing with my typing timing - a lot of moves that timed out right normaly were going wrong, eg swapped letters mainly.

I was taught to type by my mother, who was faculty secratary for the physics department at the local university and a professional typist typing things like PhDs for physics students, on golfball typewriters.

She sat me at an IBM golf ball typewriter, with a towel over my hands so I could not see them, and a keyboard layout cheat sheet to help me feel my way - at age 6 onwards. So I was used to feeling my way with tactile full click and decent travel.

So I adapted, I only need to type as fast as I can think, so mostly I can get by with 3-8 fingers anyway, but at the moment I type on a Zero gaming keyboard which is the old full click style.

So my point is it might not be just you.

My favorite keyboard is from the old NEC APC II computers, best combo of travel and click. I have one but need to get together the convertor for it.

Starting about 5 years ago, I noticed that when i type letters show up out of order.

seems to be more prevalent on newer keyboards.

also, the interaction with automatic spelling correction / word completion can make mistakes show up that were not from the typist.

Learn Dvorak (or Neo2).

Hear me out.

This functions as a proxy for dexterity training and will positively impact your typing speed and accuracy on qwerty.

When I was 20 I decided to learn Dvorak. My typing speed on qwerty prior to learning Dvorak was 80wpm. After about 2 months my Dvorak speed was 65wpm, so no negative impact on productivity. (I'm a programmer, so I don't need to type fast, I just need to not type slow.) After two years of Dvorak my typing speed was 80wpm. (I didn't measure exactly when I was on-par.) So I tested my qwerty typing speed after not having used qwerty for two years, and it was a staggering 100wpm!

Take-away: I had never learned to type efficiently with qwerty. Getting good dexterity boosted my overall typing speed.

I am not a fan of Dvorak.

I made more typos with it because my hands ended up with vowel/consonant race conditions.

So if I were to repeat this experiment today, I'd learn Neo2:

https://www.neo-layout.org/

They apply the same theory, but make a richer layout.

I presume you are a touch typist. Have to tried watching your fingers on the keyboard to see what is actually happening? Try slowing down and seeing if you make less mistakes. I also wonder whether you have changed your chair, desk or other aspect of your environment. I find if I move the keyboard away from its usual position, the error rate goes up.

I'm in my 40s and I've noticed a similar thing. I've touch typed since I was a teen. My advice is to make note of which words you mistype, then plug them into a flash card system where you can type the answer out (Anki can be used in this way). Practice re-typing the mistyped words and things will (hopefully) improve. Another thing you can do is typing exercises. I find keyzen great for this: https://wwwtyro.github.io/keyzen/

Doing that once in a while made typing easier, and it also improved my pinky usage (I tended to avoid using them). Aside from that, I think it's just part of getting older. It's not you, it's just part of life.

If you use Windows, you can quickly erase a word when typing with Ctrl+Backspace. That can save a lot of time when correcting errors.

Best of luck! :-)

I wonder how much of this is actual decline in ability, vs. perception of decline. Can you give us some hard data, like your measured WPM over time?

I'm guessing that when you're young, you notice such mistakes less because you're happy and excited to be working on new stuff. Also, because stuff is new, you tend to be a bit more careful to do things "right".

As you age and slide into a comfort zone, you begin to get a bit lazy, and expect things to just keep rolling along the same way they always have. As a result, typos become more noticeable because they interrupt your flow which you've gotten accustomed to. And any slight decline will seem like a big decline because it's that much more annoying.

I've been typing since I was 5, and I am in my early 40s. I have not really noticed any degradation in typing speed ... though now I am self-conscious about it, I am noticing something. Usually, when I type, my focus is on ordering the words I want to articulate, rather than the typing itself.

I don't feel it is because my hands and fingers are getting less dexterous. I think my reflexes are just slowing down in general. I practice something similar to Tai Chi, and in the past year of so have changed and expanded the connective tissue in my hands, so that may be a part of it.

Mostly though, it is more of a degradation of working memory for me. I've been taking Omega-3 DHA/EPA and Lion's Mane mushroom supplements for that.

Look at your diet and exercise routine. Your general health likely needs improvement.

Here's what comes to mind :

- using a speech-to-text software (Dragon comes to mind, not the only one, never used myself)

- practice on monkeytype.com

- comes with a learning curve but great in the long run : switching to an ergonomic keyboard layout. Qwerty/Azerty dates from the typewriter age when setting the most frequently letters used far away from each other was a mechanical necessity. Keyboard layouts like Dvorak is easier on the hands : the fingers travels notably less.

hope it helps.

Practice dictation, 150 wpm, invent replacements for code strings that you can find/replace later.

After a few dozen hours of practice, it’s amazing what you can do.

Has your typing form changed? I have noticed that I have, over time, developed some bad form habits that aren’t by the book for touch typing. I think a lot of it has been driven by phone and tablet typing habits, which are much more ad-hoc and evolve sort of unconsciously. So where I once had very strong and strict touch typing habits, they’ve evolved to something a little more sloppy.

Not a doctor but I can suggest a few supplements.

Omega 3 (rich in EPA and DHA), multivitamins, D vitamin, lion's mane, ashwaghanda, bacoppa monierri, glucosamine....all of these will help your brain and body recover. Wild catch salmon and a mostly plant based diet besides that.

Lifting weights(deadlift, bench press, squats) and cardio

As much sleep as possible.

No alcohol or maybe a glass of fine wine or champagne a week.

Or switch to a managerial role

Piano exercises? At least I know half an hour of piano exercises do wonders for nimbleness and control on the piano keyboard.

This sounds neurological, not mechanical. Improve your diet. Take your B vitamins. Work on sleep hygiene. Etc.

Try switching to Dvorak. It's a trip for your brain (which will stave off cognitive decline), but also 70% of the keystrokes are on the home row on Dvorak vs. 30% on QWERTY, so you move your fingers around less, which should result in a lower error rate once you get back up to speed.

At 30, I'm a way better typist than I ever have been, more precise too if I'm doing a typing test for example, but I do recently find myself having to re-review comments regardless of what device I wrote them on, because I almost certainly have missed entire words.

Visit a physician, maybe a psychiatrist? Maybe you're seeing typical mental slowdown. Maybe it's tied to physical stuff. Maybe it's an early sign of something more serious.

But a web forum is no place to get serious advise about your health, physical or mental!

Take up piano? Maybe it'll be like cross training. No idea if that would actually work.

In my limited experience, it does help, but only by making one accomplish a much more difficult task (learning to play the piano is much more difficult than learning to to touch-type).

An example: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_GN0UTm5Zlu5uU8Usc-fMQ

Like how if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.

What happens if you type slower?

Not a flippant question. I’m the same age and interested in your experience.

One easy thing to try is to make sure that the room your typing in is at a comfortable temperature. I find that if the room gets too cold then the muscles in my hands tighten up and it makes it a lot harder to type consistently.

Since you have already started dictating may be you can use voice for other tasks as well something like https://talonvoice.com/ could help.

https://www.parkinsons-research.org/

Just to rule out a possibility.

As joints get stiffer with age, typing will be slower and there's not much to do about that.

Speech recognition?

I think people can go on playing e.g. the piano on a very high skill level up to quite the age, so I wouldn't say it is that simple or definite.

forgive me the obvious, but why don't you start using voice typing? it's awesome

I have this problem from not getting enough sleep. Sleep apnea?

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