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take a moment and look down at your
keyboard for almost everyone you’ll see
the key is laid out like this
q-w-e-r-t-y a-s-d-f
we all learn to memorize the order of
these keys and most of us type with this
layer on a daily basis
but try to answer this question
why are the key set up like this why not
have all the letters be in alphabetical
order
it would be much easier to learn how to
type if you already knew where all the
letters were
but instead our standard is layout
called qwerty you might guess oh
it’s probably because layout designers
found this layout was the fastest
it must take the most common letters and
put them in the most easily accessible
locations
that is not true the qwerty layout was
created around the 1870s when typing was
done on typewriters
that old mechanical device that had a
keyboard and directly printed letters
onto a piece of paper
using ink the exact reasons for his
design
are still unclear many people say the
letters are laid out to make the most
common keys harder to reach therefore
reducing the risk of jams
others believe the layout was a result
of advice given by morse code telegraph
operators
regardless the qwerty layout was
designed to solve a problem that no
longer exists
so the question remains why do we still
use it
there is no reason aside from the fact
that it came first
it was already the standard when
computer keyboards came into prominence
and now that it’s so widespread
it would be an extremely difficult task
to alter the standard
but surely there have been people who
have tried to make a better layout right
yeah you might have heard of the dvorak
layout before it has some public appeal
but it didn’t end up replacing cordy as
the facto layout despite its claims of
being more efficient
faster and more comfortable i’d guess
it’s because in moving around all of the
keys it makes for an incredibly steep
learning curve and even after you do
learn it
you lose the convenience of shortcut
keys like undo copy
cut and paste
and looking for video ideas through my
youtube comments i stumbled upon this
one
he talked about the third most popular
keyboard layout call mac
it solved a lot of the issue that the
vork had due to it being more slim and
qwerty and
it also made it easier to learn this
comment reminded me that i actually did
try to learn colmac about
two years ago getting to around 50 words
per minute before giving up and just
practicing with qwerty again
it was hard to commit to a new layout
because i couldn’t handle typing on half
the speed when it came to
essays or emails now i want to commit
but first i have to find the layout that
suits me best
there are a surprising amount of
alternate layouts and my only problem
with colmac was an over-reliance on the
middle two columns
there are a number of factors that
keyboard layouts can optimize for
but i was looking for maximum home row
usage with minimal middle column usage
i stumbled upon this layout called
workman which is probably the fourth
most popular layout
the design philosophy aligned with what
i was looking for so i decided
why not there are a few videos and
articles on the internet of people
learning these alternate layouts
they’re fine my only problem with them
is the fact they never really get to
awards per minute that i would consider
as mastery
and sometimes they don’t even talk about
their peak speed at all
and sure where’s permitted over 100 is
probably overkill for most situations
it’s certainly an important factor to
take into account when you’re comparing
layouts
with that in mind i decided to do it
myself
i have used workmen for the past three
months and this was my experience
it’s been a while since i tried to learn
colmec i underestimated how difficult it
actually is to unlearn your muscle
memory
when you are quick with typing you don’t
think about what your fingers are doing
or where any of the letters are
it’s all done by feel i can type with my
eyes closed because i’ve practiced
enough to not need any visual reference
while typing
overwriting the habits and technique
that i use to type each word is
actually pretty mentally taxing suddenly
you have to think about
every single key that you press and
resist your muscle memory’s inclination
to hit a different key
when you first start trying to improve
at typing there are two things that you
have to achieve before you can start
getting to respectable speeds
first know the locations of the key by
memory
i’m talking about not looking at your
keyboard or any other reference image
while you’re typing
you should be able to remember the
general location of every key
after a moment of thought
second know the locations of the keys
without having to think about it
this means committing the locations of
the keys to muscle memory
you shouldn’t have to actively think
about where any of the letters are your
fingers should know where to go
automatically
from there you can start training your
speed but until you know where all the
keys are by muscle memory and without
looking at the keyboard you will be
hard capped with speed
the first time i tried using workman i
decided to play against my viewers in
type racer
it was rough i believe the best way to
commit the locations of keys to muscle
memory
was to forego any sort of reference
image i would figure out where the keys
were by trial and error and over time i
wouldn’t have to think about where they
were at all
whether or not that’s true it’s what i
did and i got destroyed
i couldn’t even complete a single race
because i was tapping with around
10 words per minute i didn’t beat a
single viewer
who stopped by and came to challenge me
[Music]
my plan was to exclusively use this new
layout after i got to about
50 words per minute i knew that i was
going to lose every race and
that was part of the reason i did the
stream to show how far down the ladder i
really
was but i was still disappointed that i
couldn’t finish
even a single quote so i decided
i’m gonna commit right away i went from
an average of 140 to 10 words per minute
it wasn’t painful the only time i ever
used qwerty was to quickly type a
response to someone who needed help
or to respond to comments that deserved
longer responses
aside from that whether i was playing
type racer or just typing a message to
friends over discord i was using workmen
i think that this was actually a great
strategy while more focused practice is
often the most effective
full immersion with whatever you’re
trying to learn can help a lot with
getting comfortable more quickly
i imagine that’s why people who learn a
second language become much more fluent
after living in that country and
speaking that language for a period of
time
for typing it was also working very
effectively i was getting 10 words per
minute faster every single day
up until the 50 to 60 threshold and i
still improved
but it started to slow down to about 5
words per minute of the day
as for qwerty i could still switch
instantly
it didn’t even take a second to adjust
if i had to respond to an angry comment
i could switch without even thinking
about it but at some point
i tried to do a quick typewriter quote
with qwerty just to get the feeling of
typing quickly again
and i was typing gibberish my fingers
were getting jumbled up and what was so
effortless before became impossible
sometimes i would be able to type for a
moment and then the rest of the sentence
would turn into nonsense
it was actually kind of scary i didn’t
want to lose my ability to type quickly
and after about 20 minutes of struggling
and typoing
it just clicked and i was back to normal
again
i continued getting better every day
after two weeks
i got my first 100 words per minute
score after a month
my first average of a hundred i was
feeling good my improvement was
consistent and at this rate i’d be
catching up to my qwerty speed soon
but improvement at typing is not a
linear process even though i was getting
better every day
after you reach a certain skill level
your improvement rate starts to slow
down
just like any other skill and that
reality started to hit me
my original goal for this project was to
get an average of 120 words per minute
and that started to seem impossible even
though i had reached 100 words per
minute in a month i was stuck between
100 and 110 words per minute for the
entirety of the next month
i was still playing type racer almost
every day i just didn’t see much
improvement
sometimes i felt like i was typing a lot
quicker than i used to
but then i’d finish the race and see
that i used to have a better score
then an old friend stopped buying a
twitter thread where i was talking about
my improvement
and he said this you’re nuts
give it two more weeks and it’ll be
faster than my words per minute on that
jank
layout unbelievable he had the gall
to insult alternate layouts so it fell
upon me to defend the honor of everyone
who used them
on a random twitch stream where some
viewers challenged me to type racer1v1s
i was winning almost
all of them scores of 90s and hundreds
pretty commonly
and then he appeared i played against
him long ago in my courty days and
trounced him so badly
i didn’t even remember his typing skill
level i was happy to take on his
challenge and destroy him just like the
others
and i lost and i lost again
and again and again we must have done 20
races and i lost every single one of
them
it’s just type racer this whole bit is
just a joke but i actually did feel
defeated
i felt like i wasn’t good enough for
many
this would be a cause of sadness and
motivation but for me
that feeling of inadequacy makes me want
to get better even more
next time i want to be the one that wins
20 times in a row
breaking plateaus in anything is a
difficult task
sometimes a new practice method can help
you push through it and other times it’s
just
more and more focused practice my
problem was that i was obsessed with
speed
i should have thought about my time
playing oh so violin where even if you
have
the requisite speed sometimes you got to
take it slow and refined each and every
motion that you’re making
that’s what let me break through i had
to slow down to go faster
and honestly that’s what improvement is
all about while this is a video
about typing continuing to get better at
anything requires this sort of
self-analysis
of course there’s an element of endless
practice but you have to know what and
how to practice too
whether you play shooters or rhythm
games or it’s another skill like an
instrument or sport
it is so important that you analyze your
own weaknesses
and mistakes and make the most of the
time you spend practicing
20 minutes of focus practice is so much
more productive than an hour of aimless
practice
but when i finally got that average of
120 i was looking for it
felt damn good and now
it’s finally time to see if all of that
effort paid off
me against sephie once again in the
rematch of a lifetime
another 20 races for the books so how
did i do
oh no there’s a dash this is not fair oh
it’s over
it’s over dude i’m slain already
okay
this is the same guy the guy who
destroyed me in battle
all right this this is it i got you in
the long run
things are looking pretty good things
are looking kind of nice
this is awful this is so bad i thought
maybe that’d have a challenge here but
i know i need a rain check or something
good guy it’s even a short one
this is this has got to be it
[Music]
maybe not maybe not maybe this okay we
gotta
we got a hundred at least
if you want a handicap plus 20 into your
scores
wow
[Laughter]
i won all of them were close but the
practice i put in was
really evident i got my redemption arc
and
played against other viewers too in the
span of three months i went from not
being able to finish a single quote to
beating pretty much everyone who
challenged me on that day
my best average of ten races was in the
top point one percent of all players
while there are still typists who are
twice as good as i am i do feel like i’m
good enough to give a conclusion now
is it worth it to learn another keyboard
layout qwerty is objectively the least
efficient popular keyboard layout
but i don’t think that anyone should
learn another layout with the intent of
trying to raise their words per minute
there are a few people using colmac with
vorak with incredibly high speeds
but there are still qwerty typists who
are even faster
how can this be possible if cordy wasn’t
even designed for speed
i can’t give you an 100 definitive
answer but based on my experience i’d
say there are two main reasons
people have years and years of practice
recording
catching up to that amount of practice
is almost impossible
and the inefficiencies that qwerty has
are not so significant as to hinder
speed in a huge way
so would i recommend learning an
alternate layout at all if you type a
lot for work or just in your day-to-day
life
you could pick up an alternate layout
since it reduces the amount of movement
your hands and fingers need to do
but that said ergonomics and posture are
still the more important things to
optimize
in regards to speed i would bet that if
all other factors were the same
if two people started from not knowing
how to type practice but one use qwerty
and the other using optimized layout
then the person using the optimized
layout
should have a higher words per minute in
theory
so if you’re sitting around the 20 to 50
words per minute area and you pick up an
alternate layout
you will probably see improvement in
your overall voice per minute mostly
because it’ll force you to re-learn how
to type
and more importantly how to touch type
i found this whole experience and
experiment to be a lot of fun
i enjoy typing a little bit more now
because the motions that my hands make
are a bit more fluid
on top of that the feeling of getting
better every single day was
really satisfying and if the idea of
learning an alternate layout interests
you
then give it a go but that said the
learning process
is truly difficult i would guess that if
a thousand people try learning an
alternate layout
maybe 10 of them would be able to stick
with it and push through that painful
relearning process at the start
there’s an amazing video on the internet
called the backwards brain bicycle
it was an experiment done by a channel
called smartereveryday
in the project he tries to unlearn his
muscle memory for riding a bike
and learns to ride a bike that has
inverted turning he does manage to do it
after enough practice but once he tried
to go back to a normal bike
he couldn’t do it he couldn’t stabilize
himself what was once his default was
now foreign to him
however after a few minutes of trial and
error it clicked and he could just ride
again
throughout the entirety of this learning
process i thought it would be the same
way with cordy
i decided not to touch the layout for
the entire last month of the project
because i really wanted to make workmen
my default
but i thought i would always be able to
go back to my original muscle memory
after a bit of practice and coercion
well
i gave it a go and here’s what happened
it’s been nearly three months using
workman
and there’s only one thing left to do
the question that everyone gets asked
who picks up an alternate keyboard
layout
can you still type with cordy
well
no no i can’t i can’t it’s actually so
difficult
i’m gonna i’m gonna see how it goes i’m
gonna get a timer on screen
here we go
it’s gonna be a struggle i think i can
recall the location of all the keys
never mind five words per minute
honestly i don’t feel too bad about that
all things considered i was getting a
lot of the right keys
no muscle memory yet we’re gonna see if
it kicks in
if and when i mean i have years and
years of practice with query i would
expect at some point
i’d be able to type with it but let me
shut up and focus
we’re like it’s j i haven’t done a
single j yet
where they put j that’s crazy i actually
don’t know they
have to reference it’s in the middle row
with a joke
[Music]
we did it 20.
one hour and one 10 minutes in and we
finally got above 20 words per minute
i’m starting to feel it i’m starting to
feel all right we’ll see i hope i don’t
have together two hours and it’s already
taken longer than i expected to be
honest
but i do think this is a milestone
that’s uh
means more than it looks like but we’ll
see we’ll see
okay i i can’t do it i can’t do this
rather i can do it i know that i can
and i know that the learning process
would be a lot easier than picking up a
fully new layout
but i really thought i could i could
bang this out in a single session
and i don’t think that’s the case i
think this is a matter of days not hours
that i get to the proper level that i’m
looking for here because
i’ve been doing this for an hour and a
half almost and i’m barely seeing any
progress like
i’m making the same mistakes over and
over again
and it’s better for sure i’m getting
better again
but there’s no like click moment so far
there’s so much unlearning that i have
to do
i feel like i don’t know if i can just
like switch gears like i thought i would
be able to
everything just feels so wrong
and i know it’s just because i’m not
used to it anymore but still
oh man i’m cramping up this is
i need to take days i hope i hope
that it’s possible to have it just click
back into
into muscle memory
i hope i’m not wrong
i didn’t end up putting more time into
qwerty
after i did this experiment i
immediately felt that my workman muscle
memory was getting disrupted
i was making more typos because my
fingers were reaching for the right keys
and qwerty
but the wrong keys in workmen i believe
that it was impossible to be able to
type at 100 plus words per minute and
two different layouts
because you don’t have time to think
about the keys you’re pressing at that
speed
i thought you could only replace your
muscle memory as opposed to being able
to activate either one at will
but i’m saying that in the past tense
and unfortunately that’s not a result of
my practice allowing me to learn to
switch between the two
and i even wrote into the script and
except about how i didn’t think it was
possible
but when i was doing some research on
fast typist and alternate layouts i came
across this one
jash the guy has an impressive typing
resume having the seventh highest score
on 10 fast fingers of all time
but one video of his really stood out to
me
he switches between qwerty dvorak and
colmac in the course of a single typing
test
it’s instant there’s no transitional
period and he’s better than me with all
three of them
but yeah it is doable and i suppose the
difference is that he practiced each
layout individually
but he also practiced switching between
the layouts
it’s a truly impressive feat that i
don’t think anyone else can even come
close to
but now that i know what’s possible i
gotta go re-learn corey again
but for now i’m still enjoying the
improvement process with workman and i
want to keep going with it
i might even try a new layout with a
slightly different design philosophy and
try to be the second person that can
average 170 words per minute across
three layouts
if you’re just looking for raw speed do
all the practice that you can and
analyze yourself for areas of
improvement
but if you like the idea of rewiring
your brain and starting from scratch
then maybe you can find yourself on the
alternate layout and get good with that
thanks for watching
i do want to plug one more thing before
i go it took me
two months to release a new video and
that’s not okay
but juggling full-time streaming while
making time for improvement at the skill
i’m trying to learn and taking time for
the video creation process
is difficult i’ve got a lot of ideas for
future videos and i want to release them
more regularly
i recently got denied for twitch
partnership and it’s given me a bit of a
reality check
i was streaming five days a week and
while it was a lot of fun i think for
the time being
i want to focus on youtube so to make it
more sustainable i decided to launch a
patreon
of course it’s not mandatory at all but
if you want to support what i do and
help me release more content then i’d
appreciate it so much if you gave it a
[Music]
look
you