Where to start

The first three sessions matter more than the next thirty. Make them count.

1. Find the home row

Put your left index finger on F. Put your right index finger on J. Both keys have a small bump. The other six fingers fall onto D-S-A and K-L-semicolon. The thumbs rest on the spacebar.

This is the home row. Your fingers should return to it between every reach. The whole curriculum is built on the assumption that you can find these eight keys without looking.

Open Lesson 1. It only uses F and J. Type for one minute. If you find yourself looking at the keyboard, slow down -- the goal of the first session is not speed; it is muscle memory.

2. Walk through the foundation

Lessons 1 through 9 introduce the home row, then add the top and bottom rows in small steps. Each lesson restricts the typing surface to the keys it has introduced, so you cannot accidentally drift into territory your fingers have not learned yet.

Clear them in order. The pass criteria are 90% accuracy at 18 wpm -- both numbers are deliberately low. They confirm you have the muscle memory, not that you are fast.

A clean run of lessons 1-9 takes about an hour. Spread it across a few sessions if your hands get tired.

3. Take a real test

After the foundation, switch to the practice surface and type for one minute against the English-1k word list. The number you see at the end is your starting wpm. Write it down. The site stores it in your local profile, but knowing your starting point on paper helps you notice progress later.

A typical first benchmark is 25-35 wpm. That is fine. Touch typing comes with practice, and the curve is steep at first.

What not to do

Do not jump to long passages, code drills, or speed challenges yet. Do not memorize stretch words. Do not try to fix old habits in one session. The way to improve is to type a little every day -- the streak counter tracks that for you. Twenty minutes a day for two weeks beats four hours on a Saturday.

When the foundation feels easy, Stage 4 -- Letter Introduction walks through every letter A-Z, one at a time. That is where touch-typing turns from "I can find the keys" into "I do not think about the keys."