"You can 3x your typing speed if you set up shortcuts for most frequently used words to decrease the number of symbols you have to type. Here’s how it works on Mac OS or iOS." So a bit a predictive typing assistance and customizations. "Here are some ideas for reflection shortcuts that I use: “wam”—“Why am I feeling this way?” “wwl”—“What went well?” “wcb”—What could have gone better?" Like duckduckgo bangs I doubt I…
If you want to go another level, try a chorded keyboard and stenographic input methods.
I switched to the Dvorak keyboard layout 20 years ago (in the middle of a mission-critical project, no less), and not only doubled my typing speed, but significantly reduced arm/finger strain. Once you put in the 3-ish weeks to retrain your brain, and get back to at least your original typing speed, you'll never go back to QWERTY.
3-ish weeks is what it takes to learn to touch-type in general, whatever layout. Put in the time and choose a layout to learn. Dworak is better if you are typing only english, there are other layouts for other languages. This is where it broke down for me, I can't learn several layouts depending on the language I want to type. And convincing some programs to use the dworak layout for hotkeys can be tricky too.
I tried moving to Dvorak in the late 1990s and I stumbled in the multiple language problem. In addition to me typing in English and Spanish, the fact that I do programming was the nail in the coffin to really being efficient in something else than qwerty. It also didn't help that I already was 95wpm in QWERTY.
> That’s right. The very first “Type-Writer,” designed by Christopher Sholes 146 years ago, used the exact same QWERTY keyboard that‘s in front of you.
Weird, I can’t seem to find the M key to the right of my L. (Not that the resemblance isn’t clear, but that’s not the only difference and they did say “exact same”).
The author's ultimate solution of "use OSX/iOS shortcuts for every word to speed up your typing" is pretty wild. I could imagine myself using this method when I think about the _tens of minutes_ of my life I've probably saved now by just making "@@" a shortcut for my email address. Unfortunately, like Dvorak, which the author also proposes, it has the "doesn't work on my friend's computer" problem. Although, maybe a…
The author's ultimate solution of "use OSX/iOS shortcuts for every word to speed up your typing" is pretty wild. I could imagine myself using this method when I think about the _tens of minutes_ of my life I've probably saved now by just making "@@" a shortcut for my email address. Unfortunately, like Dvorak, which the author also proposes, it has the "doesn't work on my friend's computer" problem. Although, maybe a…
More annoying for me is that it has the "doesn't work in certain apps" problem. Firefox, for instance, blatantly ignores macOS's text replacement shortcuts.
The author proposes that we're somehow blocked from success because we can't type fast enough. Is that true? I don't agree; in fact, I'd rather be concise and communicate well than vomit more words onto the screen. Additionally, beyond Dvorak, is there a better way to increase typing speed than spending what must be hours and hours building a bespoke solution for each one of your machines? And what is the cost of the…
Having used it for 20 years now... I don't find that dvorak improves my typing speed. If anything it probably net reduces my productivity since often I'm hitting paste (ctrl-v) and I miss and hit exit window (ctrl-x).
However, I like it because it feels comfortable typing in it, way more so than qwerty.
I switched to the Dvorak keyboard layout 20 years ago (in the middle of a mission-critical project, no less), and not only doubled my typing speed, but significantly reduced arm/finger strain. Once you put in the 3-ish weeks to retrain your brain, and get back to at least your original typing speed, you'll never go back to QWERTY.
wow, it took me 3 weeks to get basic proficiency, but really slow. 6 months to parity with qwerty, about a year before I was truly comfortable with it. probably about 2 years before I was completely fluent with both, and 5 years before my brain could map my own personal keyboards with dvorak and default to qwerty in all other cases with nearly zero mistakes. These days (20 years on) I have no problem, running, say virt-manager, which does not respect the linux key remapping, and typing in non-dvorak even on my own machine in a context-dependent fashion.
OP here: happy to answer any questions about my setup. Just to clarify - the core idea is not shortcuts but how you can use them to integrate changes in your life like reflecting on how you feel or how well you understand your learning material.
Having used it for 20 years now... I don't find that dvorak improves my typing speed. If anything it probably net reduces my productivity since often I'm hitting paste (ctrl-v) and I miss and hit exit window (ctrl-x). However, I like it because it feels comfortable typing in it, way more so than qwerty.
That’s why I switched to Colemak instead of Dvorak - keeps zxcv in the same spot.
But I agree with you completely - Colemak is way more comfortable to type in than QWERTY. Way fewer hand movements and less finger stretching for common bigrams. My non-scientifically based hope is that it’ll reduce RSI in the long run. No regrets after 10ish years