Risks, Changes, Productivity, and my Gift

When I was at the MORE Life Training in Chicago this weekend, I had the opportunity to do a lot of typing--more specifically, transcribing a large portion of the training. I am a fast typer and over the past year or so, I have begun to embrace that talent. I've gone from having to look at the keyboard when I type, to being able to go for long periods of time wihout looking down (woo!!!). I've even gotten faster--about a year ago when I first began to assist at the usually bi-monthly trainings, I typed at about 70WMP, and this weekend I was up to 80!

I had a lot of fun this weekend and got affirmed quite a bit for being so fast, being so willing to transcribe often, and for my strange method of typing. Historically I have been a hunt-and-peck typist. (That means that instead of resting my fingers on the home keys (asdf jkl;), my fingers hover over the keyboard, and I only use one finger (and sometimes my thumb) on my left hand.) Although I took computer class in middle school every year, I always preferred this method over the way I was taught. I find the hunt-and-peck method easier because I have disproportionately long fingers, and in order for my pinky and pointer fingers to hit the proper home keys, my middle fingers have to be bent at a 90 degree angle and my wrists bent a little sideways--it is very easy for my fingers to lose their home position. I just figured out this problem last night when I started teaching myself again how to type with all the fingers on both my hands.

You may be wondering--why learn another way to type when my method is already so fast and it seems to be working well enough? Well, I had a great conversation with a friend over the weekend who asked me something like, "What other areas of your life do you live typing without all your fingers?" In other words, where else do I settle for good enough and not push myself to use all the resources available to utlize my talents to the fullest and be the greatest gift to the world that I can be? Where do I stop at "good" and not go for "great"? Where do I accept mediocrity when I have the capability to make things better? Where do I hide in safeness instead of making changes? Where do I give up in the face of a challenge? (He may not have meant every bit of this, but that's what it meant to me.)

So, I have started to relearn another way to type to see if it will make me a better typist. It may not, but I will never know unless I try. I am taking this idea into the rest of my life and becoming conscious of the times when I only type with one finger and I could be using all ten.

Learning Lots,
Monica