My keyboard rabbit hole has inevitably brought me to the world of alternate keyboard layouts. While I briefly used Dvorak in university, I was using too many different computers to make it really stick for me.

I had on heard of Colemak from Christian Selig’s keyboard video less than a year ago. It sounded great – a much better design than Dvorak that used QWERTY as a base. A lot of the keys don’t actually change, and only two change which hand you use. I kept hearing how comfortable and fun it was to use Colemak, but I wasn’t too keen to give up a lifetime of QWERTY muscle memory while having to type at my job.

That changed when a coworker of mine made the switch to Colemak using Tarmak. Tarmak starts at QWERTY and makes thoughtful, small changes over time to gradually move toward full Colemak. Typing speed goes down, but not as dramatically as a cold-turkey switch.

Well. Alright fine. Let’s go.

It’s been a month and things are going really well.

Every time I’ve made a change to the layout, my typing speed has deceased to about the same level (unless you are my boss, in which case my typing speed was unchanged and I am as productive as ever). But with each change, it’s taken me longer to get to the point where I feel ready to make the next change. Throw in a week where I was travelling for work and couldn’t practice as much, and things are going slowly.

I am on the last step, which is where my coworker rushed things and regretted it. I benefit from his experience of rushing at the end, knowing that rushing would defeat the purpose of making small changes.

I’ve decided to take an extra week before moving on. I only make the layout changes on Friday so I can practice over the weekend, so I’ll look forward to making that final change in just five days!

One under-rated benefit of using Tarmak is that I’ve gotten to appreciate the thoughtfulness of Colemak on a deeper level. While I have been frustrated during this transitionary period, I can feel the fun and comfort of using Colemak that I had heard so much about.

The steps I’ve taken are here if you’re interested. I’m migrating to the Colemak-DH variant specifically, and would recommend it particularly if you’re using a columnar-staggered keyboard.