I tried and failed about seven months ago, but after much consideration I believe I'm going to make another attempt. I am 31 years old and learned to type QWERTY in the fifth grade on a lovely old IBM selectric machine. I grew up with computers and have been at a keyboard for multiple hours out of the day almost every day since middle school. Now in my professional life as a programmer it's practically the only way I communicate with anyone outside of my family. The learning part of the attempt was easy. Memorizing the key layout took about two weeks of hour a day practice. Perfect adoption just never came however. I never achieved the sort of cognizant disconnect I get with QWERTY style typing, where characters execute as a direct result of thought, without passing through a conscious translation layer. I got up to about 75 words per minute using the method, but the amount of concentration required made it a mentally exhausting exercise. I top out at about 125 words per minute on the QWERTY method. After about a month of trying to hit that unconscious plateau, I tabled the effort. In retrospect I think the chief reason I failed is that I didn't adjust my mindset when I sat down at the keyboard in Dvorak mode. I was in typing mode, which for me, because of long mechanical devotion, is inextricably linked to QWERTY. When I processed the signal to type a letter, my fingers would invariably begin to execute the QWERTY motion, then I'd consciously kick in the translation to Dvorak and adjust. The 'double-twitch' this created was uncomfortable and over the long term, exhausting. The next time around I'm going to give myself a fresh mental state when attempting to type Dvorak, where my conscious effort is spent repressing the QWERTY from the outset rather than translating it to a Dvorak motion. I think that doing so will mean that it takes significantly longer to improve my speed, but that I won't find myself capped at that 75-80 wpm rate and the attendant mental fatigue. Charlie -----Original Message----- From: Johne Cook [mailto:johne.cook at gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2005 9:02 AM To: Dragaera list Subject: QWERTY vs Dvorak - anyone made the switch? Author Holly Lisle wrote something in her writing blog that resonates with me: http://www.hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/ed-yours3.html "I don't consider myself especially subject to whims, and in fact when I do most things, I've been thinking about them so long on and off that I've almost forgotten when the idea first occurred to me. Sometimes the original idea occurred so far in the past that when I do make the change, I think at first that I jumped spontaneously. This is one of those times---no real warning that I was going to make this switch, not for me or anyone else. But my sudden leap to Dvorak isn't really; I've had some pain in my wrists for years after long bouts of typing, and I've already moved to the ergonomic keyboard and the ergonomic desk and chair and I occasionally wear wrist splints and do all the other things that people trying to fend off long-term damage from repetitive-stress injuries do. I knew that the Dvorak layout would help, and I filed that fact in the back of my mind, and at some point, something triggered in me the knowledge that the time to make the change had finally arrived. And I jumped all at once, knowing that if I tried to shuttle between the two systems, I would only slow down my progress and render the whole process more difficult." I'm right there. I'm feeling some ghost pain in my hands, nothing much, but enough to make me just a bit nervous. And then I remembered reading the Piers Anthony (who is nothing if not prolific) switched to Dvorak and was more prolific and effective than ever. And then I realized that I was again checking out various Dvorak articles. I'm standing here at the edge of the cliff and am curious if any of you have taken the plunge, and if you have any tips or considerations beyond the obvious. tia -- johne cook | johne.cook at gmail.com | http://www.phywriter.com |