Guest post contributed by Bob Watson.
Sometimes, we all go a little overboard. For myself, this happened when I was first learning how to touch type, a skill that intrigued me greatly around 1994, when I was first discovering the wonders of the personal computer.
I was thirteen at the time, and thanks in no small part to my addictive personality; I went far overboard in my quest to learn this skill. By “far overboard,” I mean to say that I had gone to the library and returned with no fewer than eleven books which all promised to teach me how to type faster than your average secretary, and three pieces of computer software with which to practice. Thankfully for me, my library was pretty good about letting me borrow far too many items, and when I brought them home, I fixed myself on them, banging away at the keyboard until my fingers ached. When I took breaks, I poured over techniques and studied diagrams, and I even hand crafted a device that covered the keyboard, blocking me from seeing the keys as I went. I simply holed myself up in my room and practiced, intent on figuring it out, for reasons that I can no longer remember.
This went on for a period of two or three days, until finally I was able to score 75 words per minute on a touch typing test, at which point I returned the books and software to the library and promptly began bragging to all of my friends as to how smart and crafty I was that I had already learned how to touch type before even making it into high school. It was hard work, and I firmly believe that anytime you do something as awesome as this in so short a time period, you should take the time to commend yourself.
I never practiced all that much throughout the following few semesters, since I had little desire to write my research papers using my computer unless absolutely necessary. Just two years later, when I finally took a touch typing course in high school, as part of graduation requirements, I started out very haughty, knowing full well that I had already mastered this skill. But then I came back with a benchmark score of 38 words per minute, much to my astonishment.
I had mastered this skill long ago, and thirty eight words per minute is nothing to be proud of, or at least, it wasn’t to me, even as a starting point. Working and working on it, I managed to finish the course with a much more respectable 70 words per minute score on the final exam, which was a fine score, near the top of the class if not the number one score in the class, and yet throughout the whole time of working on it, I was never able to outscore my initial 75 from years previous.
Aside from reminding myself what an outrageously nerdy kid I was back in high school, this story always strikes me as being something very important for me to remember. Buried within the story are some of the most important life lessons I can impart to anyone who, like me, is very interested in personal productivity and self-improvement.
What I learned most from this story was not that practice makes perfect – I had learned that lesson long ago – but rather, that it is so much better to do more with less, and to make certain to learn things over time. When I first started to learn touch typing, the eleven books I read all basically said the same thing. The three software programs I brought home each taught the same set of lessons in more or less the same order, the primary difference being whether Mario would break blocks and assault Bowser’s Castle, or whether Michael Jordan would make a basket with each successful keystroke. Had I brought home just one book, or one software program, would I have done any better for myself?
Looking back on it now, knowing what I know, I think that I would have been much better off. Instead of spending every waking moment reading about it, doing it, or fashioning elaborate (and quite useless) props to help me learn better, I took my time going through the course in high school, following a single book and using a single piece of software, which was, in fact, the updated version of one I had borrowed years previously from my local library. I also, of course, had duties in my other classes, and at the time, I was working my very first job three nights a week after school. I was, therefore, pressed into learning touch typing not in a crazy-hermit-in-his-bedroom style, but rather as a regular, non-obsessive youngster trying to pick up a skill.
To this day, I still fall into many of the same habits as I used to so long ago. When I want to learn something or work on some skill that I wish to have, I still labor home from the library under the burden of numerous books by various authors, all of whom seem to promise the exact same thing (although nowadays my library is much less willing to allow me to borrow so many books from the same section). I still invest in redundant software programs, audio CDs, or books of my own, or enroll in courses that only touch upon whatever subject I initially want to learn. It is during this time that I sometimes have to sit back and remind myself of my debacle with touch typing.
The end of the story, at least so far as it stands today, is as follows. After having taken this slow and steady approach to touch typing through high school, I noticed something marvelous. Despite the fact that it was almost fifteen years since I first started that touch typing course, and I haven’t practiced all that much since, I can still do it. An online typing test actually showed me typing at 80 words per minute now, with a 94% accuracy.
So for all of you personal development junkies like me out there, remember: sometimes less is more. Take your time, and get through things at your own pace. It would do you a world of good to approach self-help topics just like you do college classes, that is, five at a time over the course of months instead of one at a time over the course of weeks.
My new mantra is this: one book would suffice. One piece of software would suffice. Space out your learning over time, and you’ll actually learn a whole lot more than you will by reading ten books, cramming it all in over the course of a weekend, and slipping and sliding your way through everything you’d like to know.
Bob Watson is currently a mathematics and history teacher, working at a hospital with students with Emotional Disabilities. He was, and remains wholly committed to self-improvement, particularly personal productivity, and created an online speed reading test to try to encourage interest in this with his students.
