Better Skills,Better Life- Blog

Anna de Bruijn: 106 WPM with 100% first time accuracy - Profile of a Better Skills, Better Life Fastest Typist Competition Winner

Anna de Bruijn: 106 WPM with 100% first time accuracy - Profile of a Better Skills, Better Life Fastest Typist Competition Winner

If you’re curious about people who are amongst the fastest, most accurate typists in the world then read on. 

Anna has been a regular competitor using the name ‘TheFleshFailures’.  When I first saw this name appear on our Weekly £10 Prize Fastest Typist Competition scoreboard I was curious as to what it might mean.  My question was quickly answered with a quick Google search .  It’s the name of a song from the Broadway hit musical Hair (1969).  The song is probably better known for the chorus lines ‘Let the sun shine in’.  We have all sorts of competitor names and it’s always interesting to learn the origin of a name.

As I write this on Sunday 18^th October 2020 and look at the Weekly £10 Prize Fastest Typist Competition Scoreboard for competition number 29, I can see that TheFleshFailures is in first place with 84 WPM and 100% accuracy.  A previous winner, competitor misshanake, had briefly taken the top spot yesterday but Anna, TheFleshFailures, has regained the first place that she had held for the few days previously.  That’s what competition is all about, upping one’s game and Anna has done that again here. 

Anna has been a regular competitor since shortly after the Better Skills, Better Life cash prize typing competitions began in March 2020.  The competition texts at www.bsbltyping.com are pretty tough compared to other typing competition texts but Anna persevered and won Weekly £10 Prize Fastest Typist Competition No. 16 in July 2020.  She then went on to win Competition No.22 in August 2020 and, as I complete this blog, she has triumphed again and won Competition No.29  this week, hanging on to the first place with that very respectable score of 84 WPM with 100% first time accuracy https://bsbltyping.com/wftWinner

Anna is a young Dutch expat living in London.  She recently graduated with an MA in Conflict, Security and Development and is currently interning at an NGO.  She grew up around computers and the internet in the 2000s and as she puts it “I got increasingly attached to our family laptop and spent lots of time playing games, chatting on MSN messenger and fora, and creating my own webpages using a simple tool developed for children.  It was around this time I learnt touch typing ("blind typing" in Dutch) when my parents bought me a typing course.  The course was entirely offline, it came in the post in a large binder and had me type out the exercises in Word.  I also played violin from a young age, for which - with the left hand at least - you need fast and accurate finger movements as well.  When I went to high school (starting at age 12 in the Netherlands) typing was a mandatory subject in the first year curriculum.  In the final exam I set the school record with 420 KPM and 100% accuracy (I do wonder what it is now...)”  

Things have moved on since typing lessons came in hard copy book format but it goes to show that the forethought of Anna’s parents set her on the path to being able to use a computer keyboard very productively.  Anna enjoys her keyboard skills and searches out opportunities to practice her speed typing.  As she says, “I haven't actively practiced speed typing in a long time, so when I stumbled upon bsbltyping.com during lockdown I was excited to have a go at the weekly prize and improve my scores.  My weak spot is making errors and ruining the 100% accuracy, as one (or more) always seems to creep in.  Utmost concentration and a steady pace help.”

And that sums up the challenge of our BSBL typing competitions – it’s not just a matter of speed, it’s accuracy that counts too.  This is the Better Skills, Better Life philosophy of typing training; accuracy is the first thing we teach; speed follows  https://bsbltyping.com/home  Taking up Anna’s point about a steady pace, you receive personalised analytical reports when you enter our competitions or take our Typing Tests and these include split times so you know if you are keeping a steady pace or not.   Similarly,  when you train to type with the BSBL Classic Typing Tutor you receive stunning personalised analytical reports which provide you masses of personalised sports science type performance data about your typing.

Once you learn to touch type a lot of things in life get better; you are more productive at your computer and many people, like Anna, actually enjoy typing and want to continually improve their typing skills and challenge themselves with typing tests and typing competitions.

Having visited Anna’s LinkedIn page as part of my research in writing this article https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-de-bruijn-a08583ba/ I must say that she has a mightily impressive list of experience and qualifications and interests – and this is without a single mention of her amazing typing skill.  For a start she lists  four languages; this is unsurprising in a way because she is Dutch, a nationality known for their easy command of  multiple languages.  However, the language that stands out amongst her list of languages that she speaks or has studied, which includes the expected Dutch, English and French, is Japanese.   Impressive.  It turns out that Anna studied Japanese Studies in Kanazawa, Japan as part of her Bachelors Degree in International Studies which she studied for largely at her home university, Leiden University in Holland (in which she achieved a First Class Honour Degree).    Her academic career then continued at King’s College London where she gained her Masters Degree in Conflict, Security and Development, with Distinction.    All of this is very impressive and I do hope that Anna includes her typing competition achievements in her LinkedIn profile; she is amongst the best speed typists in the world and this sort of qualification is well worth including in anyone’s profile.

So, we take our hats off to you Anna, you are a real winner many ways, and we hope that you will continue to amaze us with your skill and tenacity at the computer keyboard.  Our eyes are on the scoreboard looking for you J  https://bsbltyping.com/competitionResult

You might  like to enter our free Cash Prize Fastest Typist Competitions. It's a bit of fun and the analysis of your typing performance that you receive can provide you with an insight into weaknesses in your typing and ways to fix them. And you might win the cash prize.  www.bsbltyping.com

Also visit The BSBL Infinite Keystroke Database contains every keystroke made by users in all of our competitions and products is analysed in detail and displayed in the Analytics Section of our website  https://www.bsbltyping.com/analytic   This is useful information for academic researchers or the simply curious who are, like myself, fascinated by lists!

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About the author

Tony Rust is the Managing Director and Chief Product Designer of the Better Skills Better Life Ltd.’s range of Typing Testers, Typing Tutors and Typing and Language Tutors.  Tony’s expertise in typing skills and training goes back over 30 years to 1988 when he designed a typing tutorial for the then ground-breaking hand held computer, the Psion Organiser II.  The product was called ‘The Finger Organiser’ sold worldwide and a proficient user of the typing method could achieve over 50 words per minute using just a thumb and three fingers.  Tony then went on to design the Fingers for Windows range of typing and typing and language products which he exhibited and sold in many language variants in many countries throughout the 1990’s.  These were designed from the outset to make the process of learning to touch type easy and quick, using a ‘3 Level System’ of practice.  He has designed and overseen the development of a wide range of software products including software for the Japanese company, Sharp, and has spent many years training people in the use of productivity software.  With all of these products he says that the key to real productivity is the ability to use the computer keyboard well.  Never one to settle for the status quo, Tony recently spent ‘three and a half happy years’ in China honing his martial arts skills at a Kungfu Academy and then a year and half on a Chinese Language course at Ludong University.  During this period, he also managed to find time to qualify – with Distinction - as a TEFL Teacher (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) with the Dublin based TEFL Academy.

 More about the author on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyrust/