When writing, you’d like to be carried by inspiration or impulse, but you feel hindered that typing requires so much effort.

Still, you know deep down that you have something unique to say or build.

Once you start writing, you tire quickly of the hunt-and-peck approach to sharing your ideas.

Learning to type without looking requires too much training, and any typing trainer you’ve found is inelegant or elementary.

You have to match and memorize keys and fingers, and it’s a lot of effort to get started.

You have other doubts as well.

— You’re reluctant to start. Your hunt-and-peck typing is already pretty fast, and learning how to do it the “right way” will initially slow you down--potentially for weeks or months while you’re still figuring it out.

— You wonder if it’s worth it. Your hunt-and-peck system has already gotten you this far. Is the pain of switching even going to change much? Or, even worse, maybe it’s just too late for somebody like you to learn how?

But what if your ability to write-down and express your ideas is compromised by the constant mental exercise of hunt-and-peck?

The hunt-and-peck style of writing on a keyboard is tiring compared to the proper technique. The catch is that you wouldn’t even know this, because you’ve never had the chance to experience how it feels to freely share your thoughts.

When you touch-type with the best technique, the typing part of writing becomes second nature. Your mind just has to think of what to write, how to put it best. It’s so easy and the text flows into the keyboard naturally.

Halting typing doesn’t stand in the way of the joy of the creative process.

Like any skilled work your writing becomes enjoyable and an end in itself. It becomes an activity like mountaineering, drawing, playing the piano, or fine woodwork, when performed with mastery. You might find yourself write a sentence to see what it looks like written down, only to clear it out, and replace it with another, possibly better version.

All this you can't experience without learning and training your typing technique. It’s a whole level of experience currently inaccessible to you. You can change that, and have direct access to this level of working with intellectual matter, text.

Writing in the hunt-and-peck style requires effort. You minimize the amount of writing without knowing. Business emails, personal letters, social-media posts, public comments sections after reading online articles--about all these things you think twice before acting, in the back of your head making the calculation if you should invest the time to write it right, right now. Is it worth it? Or is there maybe some more productive thing to do? With higher priority? Little doubts arise, and you’re no longer present. Only because writing is so taxing for you. I know—because I did all this until I finally made the decision to learn and master touch-typing five years ago.

The distractions outlined above happen only because you haven’t found the right time to learn touch-typing.

If you are like me, you value mastery, so it’s not even an option to not master your tools.

Right now, you can't just quickly type out what you have in mind, and then squint, and judge about whether you use it or not. Right now, putting it down still requires effort.

Maybe you want to type in some silly tracking code number or crazy generated password, which has been sent to your phone. Your eyes move back and forth between the phone or scrap of paper and the laptop keyboard, and the screen where you are typing. Adjusting your fingers, by first raising them to see where the unfamiliar characters are. This is where you lose time. You go through your list checking off thing, but it takes longer and more energy than it has to. Time that you could use to do critical work. Or time to sit in the sunlight recharging your creative capacity by doing nothing whatsoever. Or teach your kid how to ride the bike. You probably know very well what your choice would be.

Typing doesn’t need to be this problem.

If you want to be a good writer, you have to write a lot. And you have to delete a lot. This is how most good writers write. In fact, your best writing will come through rewriting. It's true. You have to sketch it down, and then think and edit.

So what you need is a clean and simple space for rehearsal. A place for training and discipline. Keys is a Mac application that provides exactly this.