Switching to Colemak

Keyboard Builders' Digest / Tips & Tricks

Switching to Colemak

The main stages and impressions of Tanukishouten switching to Colemak during the holidays.

Tanukishouten
Published January 14, 2022

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I will start with a tldr: "cold turkey" switching over the holiday was perfect for me. After a bit of struggle the first week, I could use Colemak at work without issues of productivity.

Now for a more detailed account of how it happened:

Background

I was typing on a 36-key keyboard with Miryoku qwerty layout and while becoming efficient with this layout, I kept thinking I should altogether switch to Colemak and step up my ergonomy game. What I was looking for is the satisfaction of advanced ergonomy, and although I want to reach 70-80 wpm at some point, I am happy with 50ish at first.

Why cold turkey

I thought about the different transitions methods and decided that cold turkey was most appropriate for me for 3 main reasons:

I did not need to retain qwerty touch typing muscle memory (I hunt and peck qwerty and seldom type on others' keyboards)
I do not have the patience for a slow transition and I prefer to handle change in short intense burst with high drawbacks at first (while still motivated) but fast payout (before I loose interest)
I had 10 days off during winter holidays and I thought I could make enough progress to not have to go back to qwerty after returning to work

I really think that if these three points apply to you, make the cold turkey switch when you have the chance!

Basically, I could divide the learning period into three phases:

Day 0 to 3: Learning the layout (0→10-12 WPM)

I intensively used keybr.com to learn the position of the keys. I did not change the actual keycaps of my keyboard and I do not recommend doing it, it prevents any temptation to look at the keyboard and you are so tempted to look at this stage…

Sadly, I do not have the [keybr.com] graph as I did practice with different accounts. I did not follow the keybr slow introduction of new keys though, I practiced by batch of 5-7 keys for about 15 minutes before adding more "manually". Total time is about 5 hours I would say.

This stage is terrible because for any other use of your keyboard (simple web search, chat, etc…) you are extremely slow.

I actually used my phone if I needed to use internet as using Colemak on my desktop was so painfully slow.

Day 3 to 12: Becoming proficient (10→30 WPM)

Here I switched to monkeytype.com to track my progress, on average I spent 1 hour on monkeytype every day. Here the feeling is great as once you break the 20 WPM, you start feeling why Colemak rocks: the rolling of fingers and the general comfort of reduced travel distances compared to qwerty.

There are still some frustration but once nearing 30WPM I knew I would not go back, even at work (I do not need to urgently type text at work).

Day 12 to day 20 (now): Improving (30→45 WPM)

I started to feel the progress getting slower and less regular once I hit 40 WPM, that said, this is a speed where I am already frustration free and you have the occasional speed burst that feels good. I keep practicing but with less dedication than previously, I want to reach 70 WPM in Q1 2022, let's see how it goes!

I feel that generally, it is important to focus on accuracy but not too much. You have at some points to "let go" and let your muscle memory take over or you cannot make progress as it will be your conscious part of the brain learning. Especially at phase 2, I was OK with 90% accuracy on some days, as I felt it allowed me to stimulate the muscle memory.

Most of the time, you should aim at 95% though, and I sometime go for sessions where I aim at 97+%.

Here is my account of the switch, I hope it will help people considering to switch and google stuff such as "switching to Colemak in 1 week" as I did during phase 1 frustration moments!

Happy typing to all!

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Published on Fri 14th Jan 2022. Featured in KBD #61.

Keyboard Builders' Digest / Tips & Tricks