Learning Shuangpin Input Method

I’ve been reading Li Xiaolai’s Make Friends with Time these past few days, and I’m deeply impressed by his relentless drive for learning. Some of the ideas in the book have also convinced me that I absolutely need to pick up a new skill. Coincidentally, I saw a post on Twitter yesterday saying that Sogou Input Method can have your keystrokes captured in plain text. I showed it to my wife, and she finally agreed to uninstall Sogou from her computer — much to my delight. For five years before we got married, I never used a domestic ad-laden input method. But after marriage, unable to resist my wife’s persistent pleading (she works as a translator), I eventually caved and installed Sogou. But she uses Google Translate for word lookups every day, watches cooking shows on YouTube and Netflix — knowing that my own data was being transmitted in plain text was something I couldn’t just ignore.

After uninstalling it, the question was: what to use instead? After some research, I decided to try the Shuangpin (double-pinyin) input method and even encouraged my wife to learn it too. She types so many words every day — wouldn’t it be wonderful to pick up a skill that doubles her efficiency?

I learned the Xiahe Shuangpin layout in a single day and am now in the painful adaptation phase. I’m hoping that after some practice, I’ll fully master it.

As for my wife, she’s unwilling to learn — she thinks it takes too much time. But once you’ve learned it, you save significant typing time every single day. Life is long, and all those saved hours add up to roughly an extra year.