2 steps back, 1 step forward

Improving is hard. It often means letting go of what works, stepping back, and embracing discomfort and experimentation before you get better.

Let me talk about it by telling you about my recent experiment trying to switch from an external trackpad to a mouse.

From external trackpad to vertical mouse

I recently bought a mouse.

I was led to it by a video by Jose Valim, the notorious programmer who created Elixir. At one point, he finds an error, swiftly moves the mouse, and fixes it at lightning speed!

His speed blew me away. It highlighted how much slower my trackpad setup was.

I chose my current external trackpad setup because it's ergonomic. Its position in the middle of my keyboard allows me to move the cursor with minimal hand movement.

You'll notice it's an atypical setup:

• An odd keyboard, the Kinesis Advantage 2 – very ergonomic
• Dvorak keyboard layout instead of Qwerty – very ergonomic
• A friggin' trackpad glued in the middle of it – very ergonomic

This setup has allowed me to spend 10hrs+ days of heavy computer use without any arm or wrist pain for years.

I can still type at the top percentile speed (~100wpm) with maximum comfort – it's the best of both worlds, with no trade-offs.

But my speed with the trackpad is nowhere near the top percentile. I hit 38 and 1 miss out of 52 targets in 30s in this simple internet test.

Not being used to a mouse, I do slightly worse with my new mouse: 36 hits and 2 misses.

The difference is I'm at my ceiling on trackpad speed, but can improve much further on my mouse speed.

There's only one big obstacle now: I feel the strain in my forearm and wrist from using the mouse instead of the trackpad.

I don't know the most ergonomic way of using a mouse for extended periods of time yet. I read somewhere that you must move your arm instead of your wrist, but it's hard to be precise.

Improving is hard, takes time, and requires experimentation and iteration. This will not be as easy as I thought, which is often the case.

So I'll put the mouse back to rest during weekdays and experiment with it over the weekends while I learn more about mouse ergonomy.

This reminds me of switching from Qwerty to the Dvorak keyboard layout. Let me tell you about that.

Why I don't use a Qwerty keyboard

Designed as a faster alternative to Qwerty, Dvorak's claims about speed and comfort remain scientifically unverified – but in my experience, it works.

Dvorak's claims seem reasonable given its design. The most used letters are in your strongest fingers and in the home row, the vowels on the left hand and most frequent consonants on the right.

I spend 2,000-3,000 hours a year on my keyboard, so any marginal improvement in comfort or speed would presumably add up significantly in my lifetime.

Besides, if Dvorak wasn't better, I could always return to Qwerty.

Learning a new keyboard layout is hard, but not that hard. It requires a few dozen hours of investment, which is much less time than most hard skills take to acquire.

I first tried learning it over the weekend and then tried using it on Monday at work. I immediately gave up because I was typing at ~20wpm and couldn't focus on work – it was too disruptive.

I continued to practice for a few weeks. When I had a 3-week vacation, I decided to permanently switch, use it as much as possible on my time off, and then see if I could keep it at work when I returned.

After 3 weeks of practice, it was much easier to transition to work. I was typing between 50 and 60 wpm, and with the daily usage, I was soon close to my current speed.

Now that I've used Dvorak and Qwerty and could easily choose between them, I'd never return to Qwerty. My personal experience guides my choice given the lack of scientific evidence, a common occurrence in modern life.

Adjusting to the Kinesis split keyboard was faster but similar: a few days of awkwardness, but now I'd never return to a different keyboard.

Improving is a habit that requires you to become uncomfortable to keep growing.

You have to be a little worse to get a little better.

Continuously uncomfortable, continuously improving

Your comfort zone is your competence zone. Expand it.
- Common self-help saying

Humans are antifragile. We need stress to grow.

I don't mean "stress" as in the physiological chronic cortisol and adrenaline running through your veins and damaging your immune system, that is bad for your physical and emotional health, among other things. Don't embrace that.

By stress I mean trying, stretching, reaching, followed by the recovery necessary for growth, like in strength training.

There is no growth where there's only comfort, and it's impossible to control the environment for permanent comfort unless you've already grown a lot and have a lot of power.

Embrace being uncomfortable as natural and necessary for growth. Becoming strong is hard, learning a new keyboard layout is hard, and learning a new language is hard and uncomfortable.

Most growth requires us to take a step back in our skills and outcomes for a while: you play the piano a little worse to fix your hand position, you type a little slower to use all your fingers, you write a little slower to use the right words, etc.

To be the best overall version of yourself later, you must be open to being a worse version of yourself today.

This short-term discomfort is the price of long-term mastery.