Typing Update - Sept 1
- Eric Kraus
- productivity
- Sep 01, 2025
In case you're landing here...
I’m sharing updates on my journey switching keyboard layouts, from standard QWERTY to something called Colemak-dh which is designed with an optimal key layout based on the most popular words in English.
You can read more about it here.
Thoughts
- surprised at how well the first 20 min and then first 1 hr tests went.
- impressed at the pace at which I was unlocking keys - easier to see in upcoming posts
- optimistic this experiment will go pretty well/quickly!
Data
Baseline QWERTY
Without much effort at all, I could easily produce 80+ WPM at 95% accuracy…sustained over 2:00 minutes of typing.
First Tests With Colemak-dh
Here as some of the results from my first lessons / tests on Keybr.com .
Keybr Lessons
During this period, I habe Keybr configured to ony work with homerow keys.
New keys are only unlocked when the target speed is reached. Early on, I set the target speed to ~20 WPM… and only increased it after all letters were unlocked.
In these early tests, I did not capture the number of unlocked keys - in later tests you can see this better
Out of the gate NOT that terrible! …until you realize how SLOW 20 WPM really is. ha!
After about an hour of practice, I took this screenshot. That’s about a 50% increase in only an hour!
Spoiler alert: those kind of gains won’t stick around for long.
