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I’ve heard this advice before but I find it really demotivating. I recently realized that I type with all 5 fingers on my left hand but hit 90% of the keys with

by dstick 6y ago

I’ve heard this advice before but I find it really demotivating. I recently realized that I type with all 5 fingers on my left hand but hit 90% of the keys with my index finger on the right. I’m fast mind you - 90-100wpm blind as well. But for any prolonged stretches (10 minute+) it starts to hurt. So a while back I started doing 10 minute a day typing exercises with Typing Academy to train my right hand. Whenever I did it blind it was just mistake after mistake after mistake. I felt so incapable. But when I started looking down I was able to correct myself and still use the right technique. Much better. I was slow. But slowly learning without frustration. I guess my point is: crawl before you walk, walk before you run. The frustration made me quit, and that’s always worse than looking down and learning.

alpaca128 6y ago
For me the issue solved itself when I started using my first columnar staggered ergo keyboard, meaning instead of having the key rows slightly misaligned for historical reasons it has a different height for each column of keys to accomodate the different finger lengths. Doesn't sound like such a drastic change, but within minutes it will teach the user in what ways they've been typing incorrectly all along - and in what ways the standard keyboard layouts actually promote incorrect typing. It takes some time to get up to speed again, but nowadays I type using all fingers evenly ~95% of the time, simply because in contrast to the off-the-shelf design it makes correct typing far more comfortable while requiring quite some finger gymnastics to pull it off any other way. Of course due to the different design it's not quite as flexible, for example it's not great for gaming and mainly shines when the mouse is used sparingly. But as I mainly work with text it's been a great experience for me.
- dstick 6y ago
  Sounds good! And how’s the practical downside of working on a laptop / elsewhere? Do you carry that keyboard with you most times?

by dstick 6y ago

alpaca128 6y ago

For me the issue solved itself when I started using my first columnar staggered ergo keyboard, meaning instead of having the key rows slightly misaligned for historical reasons it has a different height for each column of keys to accomodate the different finger lengths. Doesn't sound like such a drastic change, but within minutes it will teach the user in what ways they've been typing incorrectly all along - and in what ways the standard keyboard layouts actually promote incorrect typing. It takes some time to get up to speed again, but nowadays I type using all fingers evenly ~95% of the time, simply because in contrast to the off-the-shelf design it makes correct typing far more comfortable while requiring quite some finger gymnastics to pull it off any other way. Of course due to the different design it's not quite as flexible, for example it's not great for gaming and mainly shines when the mouse is used sparingly. But as I mainly work with text it's been a great experience for me.

dstick 6y ago
Sounds good! And how’s the practical downside of working on a laptop / elsewhere? Do you carry that keyboard with you most times?