so ive been at this for about 3 months now and i feel completely stuck. started with the Koch method using LCWO and got up to 5wpm pretty comfortably but now every time i try to bump it up even a little bit everything just falls apart. im copying fine at 5 then i jump to 7 and its like my brain just stops working, i miss letters and then i lose the next two trying to figure out what i missed.

ive been practicing maybe 20-30 minutes a day which i know probably isnt enough but thats all i can squeeze in with work and the kids. should i just keep grinding at 5 until its totally automatic or is there a better way to push through this wall? i really want to get to 20wpm eventually, maybe even enough to work some DX on 40m without embarrassing myself. any advice welcome, ive read a bunch of stuff online but everyone seems to say something different

oh man i remember this wall so well. what helped me more than anything was keeping the character speed high even when the overall wpm felt slow -- like set your Farnsworth spacing so the letters themselves are sent at 15-18wpm but with big gaps between them. that way your brain learns the sounds of the characters at real speed instead of building a habit around slow dits and dahs that youll have to unlearn later. LCWO has this built in actually, just mess around with the effective speed vs character speed settings.

also the 20 minutes a day thing is fine dont stress about it, consistency beats marathon sessions in my experience. i went from about 6wpm to around 22wpm over maybe 18 months doing 15-20 min most days. just dont skip more than a couple days in a row or you'll feel like you're starting over. and honestly just get on the air even if you feel not ready, even just listening to QSOs on 40m while you're doing dishes or whatever really helps your brain absorb the rhythm of real code

yeah the jump from 5 to 7 is weirdly harder than it sounds lol. one thing i did was stop trying to copy every single letter and just let stuff go when i miss it. sounds counterintuitive but chasing a missed character is what kills you because then youre behind on everything after it. just move on and catch the next one. your brain fills in more than you think once you get some context.

also RufzXP is good once you get a bit higher, its designed for callsign copying and it kind of gamifies the speed building which helped keep me motivated. good luck with it, 20wpm is totally doable dont give up