Ergodox: My Four-Year Brain Gym and Typing Revolution

Ergodox: My Four-Year Brain Gym and Typing Revolution

It’s been almost 4 years since I started using the Ergodox keyboard. In this post, I’d like to address two main points:

Let’s start with a TL;DR:

My experience with Ergodox: It’s fantastic. I love my keyboard, I love typing on it, and I miss it when I don’t have it. I even bought two sets so I could have one at home and one at work.

Why I decided to switch to Ergodox: Not primarily to increase productivity, although that’s part of it. Mainly to stimulate my brain, improve cognitive function, and challenge myself.

Why I decided to switch to Ergodox

Productivity

The main reason wasn’t to increase productivity or typing speed, because while that matters in coding, it’s not the be-all and end-all.

Yes, with Ergodox I type completely without looking at the keys (which wouldn’t help anyway since all my keycaps are blank). Yes, I type faster, and yes, I have a more comfortable layout with easier access to frequently used characters.

I have additional programmable keys like Mech and Hyper, both super handy and useful. I have layers and can switch to other layouts, which is really cool. I have other options like “tap dance.” Everything is super convenient and pleasant, everything increases productivity, and it all makes typing on this keyboard much more enjoyable.

All of this is great and makes me very happy with my switch to Ergodox. However, this wasn’t the only, or even the main reason for switching to Ergodox.

Ergonomics

Ergodox is certainly much more ergonomic. The split layout means I feel much less strain on my spine and neck when using this keyboard. From a health perspective, it’s definitely a big improvement over traditional keyboards. The button layout, where each row has keys arranged in parallel, is also a big relief for fingers and wrists. This is definitely a huge advantage of this type of keyboard.

If your shoulders and wrists suffer after working on a regular keyboard, definitely consider switching to Ergodox.

Brain Stimulation

The most important reason I decided to try Ergodox was its totally different layout. It essentially required learning to type on a keyboard from scratch. And I’m not exaggerating here. The first few days of typing on this layout were very difficult. I started off in the deep end, not only changing the standard layout (staying with QWERTY but changing many other buttons) but also starting with blank keycaps.

I like these kinds of challenges, where I have to force my brain out of its routine. Force it to readjust. Ergodox was a real challenge; my brain and ‘muscle memory’ had to be retrained. I consider these kinds of things necessary for our brain, like a gym workout for it.

Learning to type efficiently took me about 2 weeks. During this time, I only typed on the Ergodox keyboard. When I tried typing on my laptop keyboard after 2 weeks, I had quite a problem. I even thought I had adjusted so much that I wouldn’t be able to type on a regular keyboard anymore, but it only took a few hours before I could successfully type on a traditional keyboard again.

So now I don’t have a problem typing on either of them. The only thing that bothers me is the lack of some functions on the laptop keyboard, but thanks to programs like Karabiner, I was able to recreate at least some of them (e.g., layers).