This blogpost relates to the book titled, “One Powerful Question”, written by Jennifer April

This book can actually be considered as a short essay, as the entire book is about 50 odd pages and can be read in less than 20 minutes. The core idea of the book is that whatever we choose to improve, whatever goal we would like to achieve, whatever obstacle we want to overcome, we can get a LOT done by following a simple mantra:

What is the one thing I can do now to improve by 1%?

It was July 7 2020 and I was trying to type a piece of code from Ben Trevett’s Transformer tutorial. I did not realize this earlier, so dumb of me, that i was typing very slowly. It took me a long time to type in the code that Ben had written. Suddenly I realized that I was not using all my fingers to type. I was not conscious of keystrokes and the various fingers that went behind each keystroke. It was a random chaos. That’s when I realized that all through out my life, I have never learned to touch type. I was told that it was too late to learn touch typing. Usually one learns it in their childhood or teens and then the muscle memory strengthens over many decades. It was a moment that made me realize that there are gazillion areas that I need to improve, as far as touch typing is concerned. I gave myself 20 days time and worked on touch typing for an hour each day. I did improve from my hunt and peck typing. But the speed and accuracy quickly plateaued. That’s when I realized that I need to find a better way. Decided to spend 15 minutes each day. Have been doing it for the last 10 months or so. 15 minutes each day and now I can touchtype at 75wpm. I guess the difference between a massed 20 day immersion and doing a little each day, is significant.

  • There is lesser internal resistance - finding 15 minutes each day is not difficult. You tend not to procrastinate.
  • No stress as it is just an investment of 15 minutes each day
  • Doing something daily means that one tends to gamify:that’s what I did. Try to find ways to gamify the daily practice
  • Track it and see if you are able to keep up with the pact - used org mode agenda to track it. If there are any days I have missed spending 15 minutes, it is clearly visible in the planner and you tend to act on it.
  • One does not tend to see quick improvements from time to time. However, from time to time you start wondering at the massive improvements that accumulate. You start trusting the process.
  • Trying out different environments: I was taking care of my infant child while working. This meant that I had to switch the light off while the baby was sleeping and quietly work on my laptop in complete darkness. In the initial few days, I used the back-lit functionality on the keyboard as a crutch. But over a period of time, I realized that i can happily type in complete darkness. When I realized that this ability to type in darkness is a direct result of spending time on a daily basis, my belief in Do something daily to improve strengthened.
  • What started out as a recurrent task each day, actually made me look out other things not related to touch typing such as how to track something on a regular basis, how to create a system, well let me not glorify it, let me call it a mini workflow that allows me to incorporate and track this activity in my day, rain or shine ?
  • the very act that you can commit to something on a daily basis and are able to keep that going, makes you confident of taking up different kinds of challenges that could be from any area - music, coding, math, new language, drawing - you name it

What has my touchtyping experience got to do with this book ?

Well, the core idea of book is to improve by a small percent each day and not get bogged down by lofty goals and insurmountable challenges. That’s exactly what I did to learn touch typing. There are many examples mentioned in the book that showcases the power of “1%” rule. You might find any of those examples inspiring or motivating enough, that egg you to work on that little 1% each day, on whatever area that you choose to improve.