I don't have a good timeline for going from qwerty to dvorak to tell you (first change), but earlier this year I went from dvorak to workman and was back up to

I don't have a good timeline for going from qwerty to dvorak to tell you (first change), but earlier this year I went from dvorak to workman and was back up to 100wpm at least after about two months. I was in the 140s with dvorak after a year and a half or so. My best with qwerty was 160. I recently hit 115 with workman. It doesn't cause the same right hand strain dvorak did, so I'll likely stick with it longer and hopefully hit my old speeds. If you do change layouts, research them a bit first. I liked dvorak, but it used the right hand more than the left by a fair bit, like the opposite of qwerty. My right hand didn't deal with the strain as well as my left hand did in qwerty. Workman is about 50/50 left and right hand usage, and also avoids putting common letters in the middle two columns, which reduces how often stretching is needed. Colemak seems a bit better than Dvorak on paper, but still has some flaws that lead to creation of a "mod DH" variant that moves D and H to a less straining spot since they're common letters. Workman solves the same issue and is a lot more efficient than even Colemak, plus the 50/50 hand balance seems entirely unique to Workman. That balance was why I chose it over the Carpalx QGMLWB layout or the AI-generated Halmak layout, which are even more efficient in some cases than Workman. I have a friend who uses QGMLWB, but as far as I know, he doesn't get any pain in his hands. He also doesn't type quite as fast as I have, which may be related. Lastly, I want to mention that I built an ergonomic keyboard and used it with dvorak for a couple months without my hand pain going away, which is why I bothered changing layouts again. The journey has been educational. I never used to care about stuff like the pinky being weak and overused. Now I have stuff like backspace and enter on thumb keys, I'm thinking about how much I have to stretch to certain keys, etc. Some of these ergo keyboards take some keys off the right side compared to something like a 60%, but then you realize your right pinky was covering a huge amount of keys, and maybe it's worth having an extra inner column where you move the = sign to. I use a Pinky4 after using a Pok3r in the past, and it seemed annoying at first that the top row didn't fit the - and = right of the 0, but I prefer it now that I'm used to it. I've tweaked the key layout several times in QMK and it's been a lot of fun. So, I'd recommend both changing layouts and replacing your keyboard if you have any interest in this stuff.