Work needs me to be able to do 40WPM average on a numpad, but seems very hard. any tips?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Long story short my job needs me to master 40 words per minute on a computer numpad to get a promotion, and I’m severely struggling to do it. I’ve been doing typing tutorials online and the best I can get even after a week is 25WPM on average. The numpad isn’t the hard part, doing anything with the period or plus and minus key severely disrupt my flow, I just can’t seem to naturally hit them at all. I don’t even know why my job has a high WPM numpad requirement but it does.

2

Here are two methods.

  1. Alternate practices. First practice going for complete, careful accuracy for 5 minutes. Then practice for speed for 5 minutes, not worrying about accuracy. That’s what they taught us in typing class back in 8th grade.

  2. The other way is to stick with practicing for accuracy, and only when you have no mistakes, then gradually go a bit faster.

Not clear on how you can type words on a number pad, though. Do you mean type numbers on a number pad?

3

Yeah it’s numbers per minute but WPM is the acceptable acronym I think.

4

I’ve never heard numbers per minute referred to as WPM. It’s always numbers per minute or keystrokes per hour (KPH) Also, numbers per minute is expressed in thousands per hour, not tens per minute.

Practice with a keyboard you’re comfortable with. I prefer a soft quiet keyboard and others like hard clicky ones like the original IBM ones.

As suggested, start with just numbers first. The math keys will come naturally later. In accounting, I rarely use anything but the enter, plus and minus keys.

Search for numbers per minute and you’ll find lots of online tests. And unless you have have to, stay way from regular calculators. I do okay with the keyboard, but struggle with regular calculators, mainly because the keys have a longer stroke and require more force. Though after a few minutes I get back into the rhythm of the calculator.

5

Instead of this, I would try to practice on a keyboard most like the one you’ll be tested on. If you try to practice on a keyboard with big old-fashioned keys, and you get tested on a flat keyboard, you’ll have a lot of trouble.

If you’re a female (or even if you’re not), you should keep your fingernails short enough not to graze the keys.

When I had to do speedbuilding on the numberpad, I made up long lists of numbers to add up, and practiced them over and over and over again. Idk if that’s what the online tutorials are like.