When in List view you can change the selection of the selected row (Task) and column (Custom field) by using the arrow keys.
To edit the selected field(s) you need to use enter before you start typing.
When editing a lot of fields (numumber or text) it would make it easier to edit fields if we could skip this step, and start typing directly.
Maybe for multi/single select fields it would start the search as it would after hitting enter.