They say as you get older, your brain plasticity decreases. It literally gets harder to learn. The good news, however, is that you can combat it, by constantly trying to learn new things.
Over last weekend, I read this book, about the science of learning. And learning quickly. Suitably inspired, I made myself a list of things I want to learn this year. I will tell you about more of them later.
But one of them was to touch type.
I failed typing in school. Seriously.
That was in the old days, when we used manual typewriters and carbon paper. And my hand to eye coordination was horrible, and my ADHD made it all worse, and I just said to hell with it. After all, how often would I need to type?
Haha. Pretty much every damned day, it turns out. Damned computer generation.
Anyway. So, I am teaching myself how to touch type. And while I am picking it up fairly well, my writing is now so slow. (I could do about 45 words per minute (WPM) by pecking, and the average typist is at about 40-60WPM. But when I am touch typing, I am at about 13 words per minute.
But I will get better. My accuracy is like 99%, which is good. And with practice, I will get faster – hopefully faster than I was before. But even if I only get back to 45 and stay there, I am better off than I was before, because I learned something new, and forced my body to work in new ways.
Because honestly, it isn’t the learning that excites me. It is learning how to learn.