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How do you work against muscle memory to change a physical habit? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I type on a keyboard with only my two middle fingers. This was likely more efficient for my tiny hands at five years old than methods urged by the typing CD-ROMs we had at that time. However as I grew more proportional to a standard keyboard, this early typing style has persisted. I have no idea where to even begin changing this now as it’s been deeply ingrained by decades of habit. Anybody have experience with changing a muscle memory based habit like this?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I am in the middle of a major transition from using regular keyboards to a more esoteric keyboard.

I have been using QWERTY and regular row-staggered keyboards my whole life. Up until now. (38 now, been using computers since I was 2 (two), and touch typing for probably 20 years at least?)

I have been using the ZSA Voyager now for about a week, which is a split keyboard, first of all. It is also column-staggered, and last but not least, I am using a different keyboard layout, namely Colemak-DH.

I have gone from about 110–120 words per minute, to about 20-35 WPM. So I'm essentially about 4x slower now than I was before the switch.

It's... rough.

But I've read that a lot of people will say the same thing during something like this: the first few weeks, you'll second-guess your choice. It'll feel like you made a mistake. But if you persist, you'll give your brain a chance to build new neutral pathways and create new muscle memory, and once that happens, you'll be flying.

Regarding your own situation: one thing that I think helps with touch typing is to really look at a finger map of which fingers go on which keys, and try to type with that in mind. Also a tip I heard is that elevating your hands above the keyboard helps to be a little more accurate.

Best of luck!