Home - Colemak - About
The
Colemak keyboard is a keyboard layout that is supposed to be more ergonomic and efficient than the traditional QWERTY keyboard. I am learning how to type on this new layout. I'm practicing and measuring my progress by running rounds on
10 Fast Fingers.
Days spent: 29
Time spent: 5 hrs 51 min (12.1 min/day)
Current average: 61.67
Date last updated: December 5
December 10 - Day 29
Average: 61.10
Scores: 69, 61, 66, 50, 58, 58, 63, 64, 65, 57
December 9 - Day 28
Average: 57.40
Scores: 59, 58, 51, 60, 58, 58, 53, 56, 66, 55
December 6 - Day 27
Average: 58.80
Thoughts: Today I tried testing my QWERTY speed again, and was really surprised about what had happened. It turns out my QWERTY speed was terrible, and had suffered something like 30-50 wpm! When I was trying to think of indiviual letters, like I do when I'm typing with Colemak, I felt like I couldn't type at all. What's even more interesting is I could only effectively type on QWERTY when I thought about the whole word - the word pops into my head and I type it. If I think about individual letters I can't type at all.
Scores: 63, 54, 56, 56, 65
December 5 - Day 26
Average: 61.67
Thoughts: Want to call out that a had a 70wpm run today! I think at this point, instead of graphing all my scores, I'm going to graph my daily averages. The graph wtih all scores seems to be too crowded, and it's much easier to infer things from the graph of averages.
Scores: 67, 63, 63, 56, 62, 60, 70, 60, 63, 58, 57, 65, 59, 57, 65
December 4 - Day 25
Average: 59.83
Scores: 53, 55, 58, 66, 66, 61
December 3 - Day 24
Average: 56.33
Thoughts: Took a few days off while I was celebrating Thanksgiving. I think that explains the dip in progress, and I imagine that I'll recover soon. I found that after not practicing for a few days, my first few runs were rusty, but I recovered pretty quickly (obviously not a full recovery).
Scores: 48, 54, 53, 48, 56, 61, 62, 52, 65, 59, 55, 61, 58, 56, 57
November 27 - Day 23
Average: 59.36
Thoughts: This is my biggest jump in progress in any day so far. I have no idea where it came from, all I can point to is what I said a few days ago - there's good days and bad days. My fingers just feel smoother and faster. The only thing I can notice that's different is I don't really have to falter anymore, or think twice about any letters.
Scores: 57, 65, 61, 59, 58, 57, 65, 63, 59, 57, 59, 59, 58, 54
November 26 - Day 22
Average: 52.93
Scores: 53, 49, 53, 53, 56, 57, 54, 56, 52, 52, 52, 55, 51, 49, 52
November 25 - Day 21
Average: 51.84
Thoughts: 50!
Scores: 52, 46, 53, 53, 49, 56, 53, 49, 58, 56, 48, 52, 49
November 22 - Day 20
Average: 49.4
Scores: 55, 43, 46, 51, 52
November 21 - Day 19
Average: 48.40
Thoughts: Getting really close the breaking the 50wpm average...
Scores: 53, 54, 46, 53, 42, 50, 50, 46, 47, 43
November 20 - Day 18
Average: 47.20
Thoughts: I focused intently on the letters one at a time and saw usual improvements. Also, it seems like there's good days and bad days, and I shouldn't make assumptions about progress until I have multiple daga points. Just yesterday I had mentioned plateauing, but today I increased by the usual ~3 wpm.
Scores: 47, 49, 45, 46, 51, 45, 44, 53, 43, 50, 49, 46, 43, 49, 48
November 19 - Day 17
Average: 44.33
Thoughts: The rate at which I'm progressing seems to be slowing down slightly. Disregarding the numbers, when I'm typing it feels like I'm hitting a plateau. Usually each day I feel myself getting faster at finding the letters, but in the past few days I haven't had that feeling of progression. R's and L's seem to be giving me the most trouble, so I'll try to focus on those in the coming days. I think it's because they're common letters but are in pretty different spots on the keyboard.
Scores: 42, 47, 46, 41, 40, 49, 42, 40, 49, 43, 45, 49, 48, 40, 44
November 18 - Day 16
Average: 38.6
Scores: 41, 36, 44, 34, 38
November 15 - Day 15
Average: 43.00
Scores: 41, 45, 48, 45, 36
November 14 - Day 14
Average: 43.45
Scores: 45, 47, 40, 46, 44, 43, 48, 42, 41, 38, 44
November 13 - Day 13
Average: 39.40
Scores: 42, 36, 37, 42, 43, 39, 34, 41, 41, 36, 39, 38, 44, 43, 36
November 12 - Day 12
Average: 37.69
Thoughts: Huge jump in progress today. Not totally sure why. When I skipped the weekend last week, I noticed a larger-than-normal jump in progress. This is similar, but bigger and a day later. My scores are also starting to get wider apart.
Scores: 36, 42, 39, 32, 35, 47, 33, 31, 42, 40, 38, 38, 37
November 11 - Day 11
Average: 31.85
Thoughts: Notable lack of progress today, although I think it might be my two low outliers. If I remove those I scored 32.78. Still not the same improvement but not as bad. I still find I need to focus intently on the letters. Sometimes I get streaky and remember where a particular letter is for a few words in a row. Something interesting today - I started to get confused when using the QWERTY keyboard. I have to take a second to think about which keyboard I'm using now.
Scores: 34, 24, 30, 23, 34, 33, 30, 31, 33, 32, 35, 31, 34, 33, 36, 30, 37, 31, 32, 34
November 8 - Day 10
Average: 31.44
Scores: 35, 31, 32, 29, 35, 32, 34, 27, 28
November 7 - Day 9
Average: 29.27
Scores: 30, 27, 29, 31, 27, 36, 32, 28, 32, 28, 32, 25, 25
November 6 - Day 8
Average: 28.07
Scores: 27, 29, 29, 24, 28, 28, 29, 25, 30, 25, 30, 32, 29, 28
Thoughts: I find that if I focus on every letter I score better. I sort of keep a tempo in my head, tapping keys to the beat, bam, bam bam...If I can keep the rhythm steady I score well. If I let my brain try to relax and think about other things while I'm typing, like I do on the QWERTY keyboard, I miss a ton of letters.
November 5 - Day 7
Average: 25.06
Scores: 27, 28, 28, 22, 20, 24, 28, 24, 26, 28, 24, 24, 23, 26, 24
November 4 - Day 6
Average: 25.45
Scores: 23, 25, 26, 25, 23, 26, 25, 27, 26, 23, 31
November 1 - Day 5
Average: 21.25
Scores: 22, 23, 20, 21, 19, 23, 24, 22, 23, 19, 19, 22, 22, 24, 21, 22, 22, 19, 17, 21
October 31 - Day 4
Average: 18.64
Scores: 17, 19, 21, 19, 15, 18, 19, 19, 20, 20, 18
October 30 - Day 3
Average: 16.31
Scores: 16, 15, 15, 14, 13, 13, 20, 21, 16, 16, 18, 18, 17
October 29 - Day 2
Average: 14.00
Scores: 14, 11, 14, 15, 15, 14, 16, 12, 15, 14
October 28 - Day 1
Average: 10.55
Scores: 11, 11, 13, 8, 13, 11, 10, 10, 10, 13, 13, 10, 9, 11, 8, 11, 10, 7, 11