I have a confession: I spent three weeks typing worse than a first-grader before I could type at a normal speed again.
That was the price of switching to a split keyboard. And I'd pay it again.
The Problem With Normal Keyboards
If you've ever typed for hours at a time — and if you're reading this, you probably have — you know the subtle ache that builds in your wrists. The way your hands pronate inward to reach the center of the keyboard. The static tension held in your shoulders as your arms reach forward.
Most people ignore it. I did for years.
Then I started paying attention.
A standard keyboard forces your hands together at an angle that your wrists don't naturally want to be in. Over hundreds of hours of typing, that stress accumulates. Not dramatically — it's not like breaking a bone. It's more like slowly overwriting a file you didn't know was important.
Columnar Stagger Changed Everything
The Corne keyboard I use isn't just split — it's columnar staggered. Instead of each row being offset to the left like on a standard keyboard, the keys sit in straight vertical columns. Each finger reaches straight down to the next row instead of diagonally.
It sounds like a minor detail. It isn't.
After a few weeks, I noticed something: I had essentially no "reaching" feeling. Each finger stayed in its lane. The cognitive overhead of knowing where each key was dropped significantly once the layout was consistent.
The Three-Week Darkness
I will not lie to you: the transition was brutal.
I went from ~90 WPM to maybe 20. I had to think consciously about every keystroke. My brain had to unlearn 15+ years of muscle memory and rebuild it from scratch.
But here's the interesting part: it was also genuinely fascinating.
Slowing down that much made me aware of patterns I'd never noticed. I learned that I'd been typing "the" with a specific motion that felt like one gesture, not three keystrokes. I learned I defaulted to using the wrong fingers for certain keys. I learned that typing, like most complex motor skills, is more choreography than calculation.
Layers: The Hidden Feature
The other thing that changes when you go to a 42-key keyboard is that you can't fit everything on the base layer. No number row. No function keys. No dedicated arrow keys.
Instead, you get layers — virtual keyboard planes you activate by holding a thumb key.
This sounds like a downgrade. It turns out to be a superpower.
My arrows live one thumb-hold away. My numbers and symbols are logically grouped. My function keys are exactly where I want them. I can customize everything without a second thought.
Compare that to a standard keyboard where certain key positions are fixed by convention, not logic. The tilde is in the top left. Why? History. Nothing more.
On a split keyboard with layers, the layout is mine. It reflects how I think about key groupings, not how some committee in the 1870s thought about typewriter mechanics.
What It Actually Changed
Beyond ergonomics and customization, there's something harder to articulate that shifted.
I became more deliberate as a typist. Having to think about my layout made me think more carefully about my tools in general. What am I using? Why? Could it be better? What would better even mean?
The split keyboard was a gateway to a broader curiosity about intentional tooling. Now I apply that same question to my editor, my shell, my terminal, my browser. Not everything needs to be optimized. But it's worth asking the question.
Should You Switch?
Probably. But only if you're prepared for the transition cost.
If you type a lot, and you've ever felt that vague wrist discomfort, and you're the kind of person who enjoys a three-week-long yak shave — then yes, absolutely.
Get a kit. Build it if you can. Set aside a few weeks where you won't need to type at full speed for anything critical.
Then sit with the discomfort of learning something you already know.
My current board is a Corne (crkbd) with Gateron Pro Yellow switches and blank XDA keycaps. The blank keycaps were a mistake I made deliberately and have zero regrets about.