I decided to take the tarmak method and I'm at colemak now. I skipped tarmak 4 because I felt the changes from 3 to 4 would be counterproductive to me.
I'm solidly at 22 wpm until I get tired but i expect it to go up quickly. I'm natural for some words then a few of the recent changes break that flow but I suppose that's expected. Getting tired and shifting into half colemak half qwerty is the worst part. I am working on being able to code switch between ortholinear colemak and staggered qwerty. I don't want to totally ruin my ability to use laptops.
My keyboard is a keebio Iris and I'm planning a build of a Kyria. Layers are a work in progress with an emphasis on programming:
https://github.com/KabitTarah/qmk_firmw … bit_tarmak
I think moving quickly (upgrading after hitting 30 wpm at each level) over a week was helped by my being stubborn and not going back to qwerty all week (except for the engineering meeting I run and take notes for). Immediately jumping to full time forced me to progress. It was also pretty frustrating, especially toward the end of the day.
I'm not planning to do any mods at this time. Iris is column staggered and Kyria even more so