I decided I would learn how to touch type after years of hunting and pecking on a keyboard. I used a computer every day, composed lots of emails, and it was really getting me down that I felt friction not being able to type fast.
Anyway it took me less than a few hours to learn the layout. You really cannot afford to look at the keyboard when learning. I think it's probably fine to print a layout and put it above the monitor or something, but resist looking at all costs.
I was very annoyed that although I could touch type at first, it was incredibly slow for me. It took me weeks to get past 20wpm. I used quite a stodgy old typing tutor that did lots of capitalisation and punctuation and it really wasn't fun.
My gains were very slow. Months to a year to edge up speed. And I found fingering difficult and stressful. But some of that was because I was very rigid to begin with.
I found it very difficult to get advice on good fingering technique. The mantra was though from others was to focus on accuracy above all. Even if you are slow. And repetition.
I found once I got to the point I could touch type for emails and IM, rather than copying texts, it was a bit more enjoyable. Sites like monkeytype pick the most frequent words. It is worth focusing on these, as they cover a huge swathe of what you'll type but the reality is that you won't be as good as the stats on monkeytype suggest.
You can do drills of common English digraphs and trigraphs. https://pi.math.cornell.edu/~mec/2003-2004/cryptography/subs/digraphs.html
As many words are composed of these key combinations, if you drill them, something like 'es es es es es es es es th th th th th th th th es es es es es es' etc. they'll subliminally seep in and help.
Also don't expect to be able to do this over night, or over a week, or in a month, it's quite a long term process. It took me years to get to a WPM that I was happy with. And I'd say something around 60wpm is when touch typing becomes useful as you can type your thoughts without huge amounts of delay. We speak at about 130-150wpm.
Now I'm not the kind of person that is all over a smartphone, but just punching away on a phone keyboard I can sometimes do something like 60wpm, especially when you leverage word completion. I prefer to use a keyboard, but am surprised how quick people can use smart phones. And I think once you get to about 60wpm it's useful enough. As others have suggested in other threads, remember that you can dictate to phones these days. And use modern tools like AI to clean up and refine something like a letter.
I honestly thought when I started to touch type that keyboards would be a thing of the past in a few years, so am slightly baffled that they are still hanging in there.
Oh when I started I was hoping that I would get some shoulder and neck relief if I typed proper. However my shoulder still suffers when using certain keyboards. I know they are all the rage these days, but a good mechanical keyboard can be had pretty cheaply and if you learn to not 'bottom out', you can get into the habit of using more of a delicate touch. There's quite a difference between laptop keyboards, cheap membrane keyboards and mechanicals. Weirdly though if you think about old school type writers they required quite a strike and yet I can't remember people moaning about RSI back then.
The gains and speeds come in time, when you naturally cut corners and learn shortcuts. I could probably not bother using my pinky and still type okay, but my hands will move about a bit more. As said that all comes in time.
There are also alternative ergonomic keyboards out there. I wouldn't be put off of using something like them if they work for you, you could always buy one for work and have the same at home. Don't get bogged down thinking you need to be able to jump on any old computer and be able to touch type. There's lots of benefit in making your own work station comfortable. Check out a keyboard like the moonlander or ergodox. My personal view is that the computer keyboard and layout is a bit of an abomination anyway. Qwerty overloads the left hand, the right hand gets loads of odd punctuation, and the home row on the right hand is pretty daft. The stagger designed for type writers has found its way onto computer keyboards, and it's quite horrible. Even if you adopt home row typing you'll see some weird asymmetrical contortions with your left and right hands.
The thing is as time goes on, you think less and less about these strange designs and don't question the status quo. And keyboards are vaguely 'good enough'. But really if you spend all of about 20 minutes thinking about it, they are crap and ridiculously outdated. However them's the norms.