Unconscious Skills

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Fast typing isn’t really about moving your fingers faster.
What it’s really about is not thinking with your fingers anymore.

If you have to hunt and peck to find each key, your brain’s attention is divided between the search and your ideas.

The same thing happens when climbing any hierarchical skill tree – typing, math, an instrument, a sport, you name it.

If you are still thinking about the basics, your brain doesn’t have the room to focus on the higher-order tasks.

That’s why you have to practice the basics, hammer them in, and layer on top of them until they become so automatic, so well ingrained, that it’s just like breathing.

That’s how you get to the complex maneuvers.
They become possible once the simple maneuvers become unconscious.

Further reading: Cognitive Science of Learning: Developing Automaticity .

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