I've been using Colemak for 5+ years now. I spent a lot of time researching layouts before I committed to one. My conclusion on efficiency was (1) nobody really

I've been using Colemak for 5+ years now. I spent a lot of time researching layouts before I committed to one. My conclusion on efficiency was (1) nobody really knows because everyone types differently (2) raw speed isn't important since most typing I do involves pauses to think. Dvorak and Colemak would both solve a huge problem for me. Qwerty requires a lot of extreme row movements that were causing me a lot of hand pain. Both Dvorak and Colemak move a significant amount of typing to the home row and eliminate a lot of the movement directly between the extremes of the rows. Choosing an extreme, anecdote, a word like minimum alternates between the top and bottom row between every letter on Qwerty. On Colemak, minimum there's only one extreme jump u => m. I've found that this tends to hold true for much of what I type. I personally choose Colemak because I liked the transition process a bit easier. The base layout is closer to Qwerty and you can pick a few keys to transition at a time.