Keyboard Report!

[hamletta]

If you missed that entry, last week -- wait, it was the week before that, I've lost track! -- I decided to experiment with Colemak keyboard layout. My shoulders were really bothering me, and it was going to be a slower week and I knew I could rely on dictation if I needed to type something fast, so it seemed like a good week to try.

I was wrong.

I ended up giving up even before the end of the week. What I have learned, however, is that it is clearly a way better layout than qwerty, both for my wrists and shoulders (it claims that your fingers move 2.2 times less than with qwerty and I totally believe this) and for my speed. I'm a very slow typist and I could see how Colemak could make me faster, with time.

That that's where I erred. I underestimated how hard it would be to switch. I knew it would be a pain but I thought after a week of intense practice I could get up to tolerable speed, and then continue from there. But I failed to account for two things: first, the amount of practice I needed to do was putting even worse strain on my wrists, leading to more pain. And two, even though I had no assignments due, a lot of my game work consists in Slack exchanges where dictation was useless, and slow typing was really getting in the way.

So, I gave up, at least for now. I may try again when I have nothing going on for a week or two and really can give it a proper effort. It is definitely a better layout.

Comments

[yhlee]

Just a note--so Dvorak is as you know different from Colemak (with which I have no experience), but I think one week is an unrealistic time frame in which to get up to speed on a new keyboard. I type 100+ wpm on Qwerty and it took me one month of fairly determined practice to go from zero to about 40 wpm on Dvorak. I really loved Dvorak, but it was too much of a speed hit so I ended up not pursuing it further. (This was back during grad school.)

Learning a new keyboard layout is really a dilemma because the transition period is so painful, especially when you have work you need to get done. Best wishes finding a solution that works for you.

[hamletta]

You're right, I was totally unrealistic. I mean, I hadn't hoped to get fluent, but even getting to tolerable would have taken longer. It was a good experience, though, so one day I might try again.

[yhlee]

I hope you find a good time for it! :) It did sound like you could get a lot of benefit from it down the road.

[sovay]

What I have learned, however, is that it is clearly a way better layout than qwerty, both for my wrists and shoulders (it claims that your fingers move 2.2 times less than with qwerty and I totally believe this) and for my speed.

I have never tried another keyboard layout than QWERTY (which works for me; I learned ten-finger typing at age eight and now use a sort of seven-fingered system, whatever), so this is a really neat experiment to read about.