so ive been at this for about 3 months now and im stuck. not completely stuck but it feels like im hitting a wall somewhere around 12-13wpm. i can copy most characters fine at 5 or even 8wpm but the second i crank it up past 12 everything just turns to mush in my head. i cant seem to get my brain to just hear the whole letter instead of counting the dits and dahs individually which i know is the wrong way to do it but old habits die hard i guess.

im using lcwo.net for most of my practice and doing maybe 20-30 minutes a day when i can. someone told me to try the koch method starting at like 20wpm character speed even if the overall speed is slower, which i started doing but honestly it feels weird and uncomfortable. does that discomfort ever go away or am i doing it wrong

just curious how long it took people to get from beginner speeds up to something useful like 20wpm where you can actually hold a real qso without the other guy having to slow way down for you

the discomfort with farnsworth spacing absolutely goes away, took me maybe 3 or 4 weeks before it stopped feeling like someone was talking to me in slow motion between fast letters if that makes sense. the key thing is dont drop the character speed down no matter how tempting it is. your brain needs to learn the sound of each character as one single chunk and you cant do that at 5wpm because you have time to count.

for me personally it took about 8 months to get comfortably to 20wpm but i wasnt super consistent about it. some weeks id do nothing and then feel guilty and binge practice for a few days. if you can really stick to 20-30 minutes every single day you could probably do it in 4 or 5 months id guess. the other thing that helped me a ton was just listening to actual qsos on the air even when i couldnt copy everything. just having real code in your ears instead of practice files makes a difference somehow, the rhythm is different when a human is sending versus a computer

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it since january and stuck around 11wpm. one thing my elmer suggested was head copying, like put the pencil down and just listen without writing anything. felt totally useless at first but i think its slowly helping? hard to tell. anyway good luck hope someone else has better advice lol