Brain vs Fingers

dr_mabeuse

seduce the mind
Joined
Oct 10, 2002
Posts
11,528
At work one time I sat in the cube next to a guy who could type so fast that you couldn't even hear the individual key-clicks. It was just like a rippling purring sound, kind of like when we used to put baseball cards in the spokes of our bikes and ride real fast.

I've always thought that I'd write better if I could type faster, especially if I could type as fast as I could think, like that guy seemed to do, but now I'm not so sure. I think now that maybe my fingers are a little faster than my brain.

Which is faster with you? The speed at which you think up the words to set down, or the time it takes you to type them out? Brain or fingers?

And, for those who write longhand as well as keyboard, do you see a difference in your style when you use one or the other? I don't write longhand much, but when I do, I think my sentences are more thought-out. Do you think it makes a difference?
 
i type very, very fast. the last time i was tested, and now we're going on 10 years ago or more, i was at 85 WPM. even so, i can't keep up w/ the speed of my thoughts.

ed
 
Fingers are faster. Oh, the ideas come ... but my brain slows me down by agonizing over word choice & phrasing. ;)
 
I can't keep my fingers up with my brain....even though my typing has gotten much faster in the last couple of years...


it's all Imp's fault!.....ok, not all....but some!
 
How fast I type and/or write is pretty much meaningless, seeing as I will have to go over each word and each structure a number of times before I'm ready to move on to the next sentence. I try to let the words flow in a first draft, but it's no use. I can't do it any other way.
 
My mind is MUCH faster than my fingers. I often end up typing half of one word and finishing it with another words, because my brain is running too quickly.
 
Sitting, idling, dreaming and thinking are joys. Typing is a pain in the ass.
Writing in long-hand almost always produces the "well-thought" phrasing and structure, but I'm also to addicted the ease of the keyboard.
All that is visible on this backspace key is the arrowhead.
It appears hopeless.
 
I dropped out of typing class in high school because I hated it and my thinking was, "I'm not a writer. When I'm ever going to need this shit?"

That said, I've gotten really fast at typing, albeit completely wrong by technical standards. It's hard for me to tell if I think faster than I type. I usually hammer out the basic idea, stop and think for a second, hammer out a little more, and so on. It's rare that I type more than a few paragraphs without breaking. If I had to guess I would say my brain is working faster while typing because I have to no where I'm going to know what to write.
 
I type pretty fast and I think as fast as I type. One holds the other back, in a good way I think.

Then I pause and think for a second, then type some more. Reading the type as it appears sometimes changes the content or direction of individual sentences and sooner or later my mild aphasia strikes and I cannot continue at all until I remember the exact word that I need.

Personally I'd argue the original question anway. I kind of like the idea that it's the body that thinks and the brain is just a storage device. This theory goes someway to explaining two things.

One: Deja Vu. The short-circuit theory. It's not that you're remembering something from before, you're merely remembering the same thing twice.

Two: Faster than thalamus responses. Tests apparently reveal that some measured physical responses happen faster than the time that it takes for a two way signal between muscle and hypo-thalamus (the non-thinking just reacting part of the brain).

Now that I think about it, this theory would account for some disabled persons inability to communicate. Interesting. Over control of muscle (jocks) and geeks don't play sports. Hmmm.
 
I type pretty quickly, and my mind and fingers seem to keep up with each other pretty well. I do the type, stop, think method also.
 
If you took an average, I'd type faster than I think by a long long way. But when I've tapped a creative vein and the words are flying off my fingertips, then the fingers can't keep up.

However: I have the idea in my head. It only gets formed into sentences when my fingers gets involved. So technically, they're neck and neck.

The Earl
 
My brain leads first.....I methodically scribe in longhand, decipher what I've written in my heiroglyphics and then do the final piece typewritten where I poke and prod it to death.
 
My mind is way faster than any part of my body . But of course nobody can tell, particarly when my mouth is full of food.
 
My mind moves much quicker than my fingers. I spell horribly and my sentence construction is awkward; so I have to stop to think how to a word is spelled, or to verify that what I've written is actually translates on the page.
 
CrimsonMaiden said:
I type pretty quickly, and my mind and fingers seem to keep up with each other pretty well. I do the type, stop, think method also.


I use the "sit down, type two words, backspace, retype words exactly the same, log on to internet, get up and play Madden 2004, then return to computer and finish sentence before saving and checking the Lit. boards" technique.

I can't say one is always faster than the other, just that the two never on the same pace, and it doesn't help my thinking or typing in either case. And my mind wanders at a faster pace than it plots, characterizes, or my fingers type.

I think if I could get my mind to focus, then I could probably ... manage... to have...

...hmmm....

:)

:rolleyes:

:p

:D

:cathappy:

I like pie...

Pie is good.

Wonder what's on Comedy Central right now...

Q_C
 
yui said:
My mind moves much quicker than my fingers. I spell horribly and my sentence construction is awkward; so I have to stop to think how to a word is spelled, or to verify that what I've written is actually translates on the page.
I bet you went over and over that post checking it.
 
Two methods...

a) Think sentence... type sentence -- Makes question irrelevant.

b) No think... just type -- as in I'm not doing any REAL thinking

It's like learning another language... THINKING in the language is a major barrier before that there's a hesitation while you do an internal translation.

On a good day, my fingers and brain are directly connected and I'm not doing any translation.

Of course, that's usually requires the most amount of editing because my mind SEES on the page what it expects to.


Sincerely,
ElSol
 
I'm a two finger typer. The right hand spends half the time hitting the backspace key and working the mouse to do the 'spell check'. The left spends most of the time hitting the 'a', 's', and 'd' key or trying to hit the 'shift' key at the proper time.

I find that I can think much faster than what I'm typing to the point that I'll reread something and notice a word or block of words are missing. I was so frustrated at one story that I had someone sit and type what I dictated to them. Of couse, when I read what they typed, they edited what I was saying to suit themselves. So that was a one time thing.

I tried a voice activated program and spent two days saying, "Go back," "Correction", "Go back", "Penis, Penis!, not Peanuts!"
 
dr_mabeuse said:
At work one time I sat in the cube next to a guy who could type so fast that you couldn't even hear the individual key-clicks. It was just like a rippling purring sound, kind of like when we used to put baseball cards in the spokes of our bikes and ride real fast.

I've always thought that I'd write better if I could type faster, especially if I could type as fast as I could think, like that guy seemed to do, but now I'm not so sure. I think now that maybe my fingers are a little faster than my brain.

Which is faster with you? The speed at which you think up the words to set down, or the time it takes you to type them out? Brain or fingers?

And, for those who write longhand as well as keyboard, do you see a difference in your style when you use one or the other? I don't write longhand much, but when I do, I think my sentences are more thought-out. Do you think it makes a difference?

Brains. If only thoughts could be recorded by just thinking them.When I get hit with a good one it writes itself, strings of sentences fly long before I get them type. I'll write on paper some things but usually when the words come that fast they come over and over until I catch up. I wonder why. I write better longhand,the thoughts are more organized and better worded. I make less changes in longhand.
 
If I could think as fast as i can type, I couldn't work in advertising.

When I hit the Zone, I not only out-type my brain, but sometimes my keyboard. Typing becomes an outlet for aggression, although I'm not aware of it until I break something.

I don't just type fast; I type hard. I used to jam Selectrics; now I disable popular vowel keys. I rendered two of them useless on a previous ibook when it was less than a year old. I felt awful about it, as if I had run over a $900 chipmunk.

Now I use a silicon keyboard protector. Its intended purpose is to keep spewed Diet Coke out of the works, but I find that it provides some shock protection when I'm pounding this %#@% thing like I am right now, and it makes the ink last longer on the most frequently used letters.

The closest approximation to my typing frenzy is the way I played Space Invaders. That won me a case of beer and turned a roomful of male friends into a defeated hostile army. I don't even like beer. Damn, it felt good.
 
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