I'm big on big plans. I'm an "Idealist" personality type—see the definition at Keirsey—and we tend to be big on head-in-the-clouds ideas.
But the Big Plan often leads to the Big Fizz. Things fizzle out. Meaning, my high-flying ambitions collapse like a bad soufflé in the face of the work needed to attain them. My big ideas shrink. Slink away to oblivion. The rubbish heap of my unrealistic ambitions is a high one.
But here's an interesting thing. I'm getting a bit older now, as longtime readers know. I was in my forties when I started this blog, and still passed for youngish. Now I'm settling comfortably into my sixties. (My birthday is on Thursday—it's the Macca one. And thank you, MikeR, for the funny card and the piece of your mind!) And when you start getting older, or so I read, one of the recommendations for keeping your mind healthy is to deliberately struggle with new things. Not to attain things, necessarily. Just to challenge yourself.
Struggle...for the sake of the struggle.
My big plans were usually based around results—around attainment. That was the big idea. I de-emphasized the journey, exalted the destination. But when you look into it, it turns out that to keep your brain flexible and lithe, responsive and athletic, one thing that's important is to struggle with new things. Learning a musical instrument is often mentioned as being beneficial, if you're not musical and don't already play. Learning a language, or, if you already know more than one, learning a new one, or a harder one. For instance, if you speak three Romance languages, trying Thai, or Navajo, or Tagalog.
Learn to dance. Not despite, but because, you've always had "two left feet." If you're a photographer and already good at looking, paint. My friend Nick, as photographer most of his life, is learning to be a potter and is doing great at it. If you grew up in the era when "rote memorization" was in disfavor as a pedagogic method for kids (it was very much in style for the Greatest Generation and earlier, distinctly out of style by the time the Baby Boomers came along), memorize some poems. If you're "innumerate" (a coined word applying the concept of illiteracy to numbers), take a math class. If you're "terrible with names," start trying to learn and remember the names of the people life throws in your path every day. (My mailman is Charles.)
You get the idea. It's not the attainment that matters. It's the struggle. I'm not into the theory, so I'm not going to talk about blazing new neural pathways or whatever. But this idea, of "struggling on purpose" as stretching exercises for your brain, is something I've been aware of for a few years and it's beginning to sink in.
If something is hard for you, don't worry about it—that's the point. Is learning Chinese online frustrating? Great! You're doing well then. Is memorizing sequences of movements on the dance floor something for which you have no aptitude? Well then, crank up the Victrola, grab your sweetie, and cut the rug...I don't know, are there ballroom dancing classes online? There must be.
It's an odd concept for me. We all gravitate to the things we already do well—we like to feel good about ourselves, and deliberately throwing up challenges that are "outside of our comfort zone" is against human nature. And I have some reservations about it, because I think it's very difficult to stick to something we have no natural aptitude for—aptitude is what leads to reward, and it's tough to stick to anything without reward.
But that's actually one of the advantages of the struggle-for-the-sake-of-the-struggle model...if you spent three weeks grappling with Mandarin on Duolingo and then just drifted away from it because you weren't getting anywhere or it was just too much of a slog, well, it's not a failure. You've done your brain some good.
Nice.
Old Photo Dawgs
Anyway...after I'm nothing if not game. After reading the last part of Dave's comment to the post on Friday (and Chris Hunt's seconding of Dave's comment), late last night I spent an hour at a touch-typing learning site online.
And...actually rather enjoyed it.
But I don't know. I really don't know. Can I learn to type? Can you really teach an old Photo-Dawg new tricks? I kind of doubt it. Those old neural pathways are really grooved. Learning to touch-type feels an awful lot like just another Big Plan to me. One inevitably bound for the Big Fizz.
Maybe, though, even if I can't learn to type, the time taken for the attempt won't have been wasted. It'll be a failure, but, like trying and failing to summit Everest, at least I'll be able to say I tried.
Here's a weird thing—this morning, back to my regular old four-finger typing method, I'm typing noticeably better. What's up with that?
Anyway, aiming to struggle with new and challenging things, even if you fail—that would be a "big plan," wouldn't it? An idealistic ambition? And I've always been good at those. :-)
Mike
P.S. Taking several online typing tests, which I just did, I time out at about 45 words per minute with 100% accuracy, which is better than the average of 36 WPM. But I'm at a disadvantage in that test because I have to look at what I'm supposed to type. That's not typical of the way I write. Most of the time I can type without looking at the keyboard, but I do have to check back and forth from time to time. I probably look at the keyboard one-third to half of the time I'm typing? Something like that. So copying slows me down a lot. I've always been aware of that. Based on those tests, I would guess that when I write "out of my head" rather than trying to copy something (like writing this, for instance), I'm probably around 60 WPM. Although stopping to correct frequent mistakes slows me down then too. Because my fingers fly around the keyboard, I frequently hit two keys and the wrong one registers and I have to go back. If my fingers moved less (or if I were more coordinated) I might be faster. (Today is a good typing day, BTW.)
I should set a timer for three minutes and just write something, then count the words and the errors. That would give a better idea of how fast I actually type when I write. But many times I just don't need to type faster because before I type I have to think about what I'm about to say.
ASW comments, "I wonder if some (lucky?) people find a typing style that matches the pace of their thinking. Most TOP readers would agree that your writing is clear, concise, and organized. Maybe your hunt-and-peck typing style matches the pace of your idea formulation, or even facilitates your writing process."
That might be the case. If my typing keeps up with my composing speed, then there's no problem, right? After all, I'm a writer, not a secretary or a data-entry person. The fastest typists I've known were a photographer in the '90s who worked at a family typesetting business, and my current doctor. He says he's never been timed but I would bet good money he's easily above 100 WPM, and if he timed out at 130 I wouldn't be at all surprised. He will type up an original half-page summary of a 20-minute appointment while he's talking to me, and it takes what seems ninety seconds. Other people I know who are patients of his also remark on it.
But I definitely notice that my typing skills are deteriorating. I first saw signs of it at age 45, and it's been getting very slightly worse since then. These days I have "good typing days" and "bad typing days." Sometimes I'm fast, sometimes things don't flow. When I have bad typing days I make loads of errors and it definitely slows down my work.
Book Product o' This Week:
Is it too late for this? 2021 is still young. There are two reasons to value these Michael Kenna calendars from Nazraeli Press: one is that his originals are 8x8", so these pictures are meant to work at wall-calendar sizes. The other is that Michael's calendars can actually increase in value! Dan Smith suggested this, and he reports that some older ones sell in the hundreds of dollars. "The printing is excellent," Dan wrote, "and the calendar is beautiful."
The above link takes you from TOP to Amazon. This week's pick is not available at Amazon Canada, but 2019 is. Hey, the pictures are still good. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Bill Tyler: "Here's one data point, admittedly anecdotal, about re-learning typing technique. I learned touch typing in high school—the most useful single class I took in those four years. But in my 50s, I began having severe pain in my right thumb as a result of using it in the canonical way to hit the space bar, and developing arthritis. So I tried switching to my left thumb. It took about two weeks to make that natural. Then the same pain started developing in my left thumb, so I switched to using my right index finger on the space bar. That took another two weeks to feel natural. Several decades later, my right thumb is not fully normal, but for a long time it's been reasonably OK. I still use my right index finger for the space bar. So each time I switched my typing patterns, it took a couple of weeks for the new pattern to feel natural. Your mileage may vary, but it may be worth the attempt. At the very least, you'll be taking another journey."
Brian Stewart: "Excerpt from 'Ithaka' (1911), by Constantine P. Cavafy (I'm unsure of who did this particular translation):
'When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
'Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don't in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn't anything else to give you.'"
Paul in AZ: "Many, many years ago my high school had a required class in typing as part of their university entrance track. Seemed silly to me at the time. As I recall 60 words per minute was a passing grade. I actually got pretty good at touch typing. Needless to say that course in touch typing could be the most useful single course I took in high school."
David Dyer-Bennet: "In terms of matching speed of thought to speed of output (typing), my own experience, and watching and talking to many professional writers, what I see is that often you think quite a while—and then have a bunch of stuff to dump out to paper (you didn't write it all in your head, but you decided roughly how it was going to go, and then it gushes out). Fast typing makes that last step much less frustrating."
Dominic Tantram (partial comment): "Just a note, no doubt covered by others; but current neuroscience suggests you definitely can forge new tracks in a matter of months. Significant improvement in your typing should be possible. While your big goals set ambition, you also need milestones so you can see (and congratulate yourself on) progress."
Ilkka: "Don’t worry about it. You have been typing for some 40 years already [50 —Ed.]. You are doing fine. Content is more important than speed. Where’s the rush? Your advice for young people is good. But at our age? I wouldn’t worry about it."
Steve Rosenblum: "My mother (may she rest in peace) made me take a typing class in high school. I pushed back pretty hard on it but she was adamant. I said, 'Aw, Mom! Why should I take typing? Only girls take that class! [Note this was in 1967 and I was 15.] The ones who are planning to work as secretaries. What's the point?!' She wisely said, 'You're planning on going to college, right? You are going to have a lot of papers to write and turn in. Who do you think is going to type all those papers for you? I'm certainly not going to pay anyone to do it, so are you going to spend all your savings on having papers typed?' So, under protest, I took the class. There I was, the only boy in a class full of girls, and too young and dumb to see that as the great advantage it might have been! But, I took to typing like a duck to water and became pretty proficient.
"Little did I know that 20 years later there would be a PC with a keyboard attached on every desk. As others have said, it was likely the most useful course I took in high school from a practical skill standpoint. Thanks, Mom!"
Peter Jeffrey Croft: "I'm almost exactly 10 years ahead of you on life's path and you speak of things that are much on my mind.
"First, on big plans, it's exercise for the brain just as we need exercise for the body. Seems self-evident.
"Second, instead of saying, 'I wonder if I could do this,' say, 'I'm going to do this. What do I need to do to achieve it?' Positivity. In 1974 I had the chance to go to UK and Europe (I was 27). I started thinking, 'Oh, can I do this?' But I switched to, 'I'm going; so what do I need to do?' It worked.
"Third, I never got a university degree, only a technical college three-year diploma. I've always wanted to do a degree but I wanted to travel a lot. Since this pandemic stops us travelling, it looks like my time has come to go to university, at 74. Too old? I read today of an Italian guy who got his first degree at 83. There are many, many stories like this.
"Fourth, I'm a two-finger typist but my fingers seem to know where to go by themselves. Like the others, I've found that I type at about the same rate as I think, which probably doesn't say much. I've never measured my speed but I don't care, I compose as I go.
"Finally, when PCs were just being born in the late '80s, and I was a tech, I didn't care what faults developed, I saw it as a learning exercise. Every fault was my challenge to overcome. It worked—there isn't much I haven't seen and overcome in the past 40 years."