Hello all,

I have spent some time reviewing different posts on this forum and I thought I would ask for advice here. I hope I'm not on the wrong forum for this.

Recently, with lockdowns becoming my daily routine, I decided it was time to invest into a standing desk to keep moving a bit. Then I had a surprise: while typing on my macbook while sitting doesn't bother me much, doing so standing is impossible for me: my neck starts hurting after 30 minutes. On a chair I have the (bad) habit of slouching so much my head is almost at the level of the screen and hence, no neck pain.

Hence, I decided I needed a stand for the laptop and an external keyboard so I could look at the screen without hunching. And down the mechanical keyboard rabbit hole I went... After looking at lots of models and testing none of them thanks to pandemic, I picked a split ortholinear keyboard, having no clue what I was doing. I can switch the keycaps easily so I can easily try colemak now, and I think I need some advice. The keyboard is also fully programmable so I can configure layers, etc. (Well, in theory — keyboard has not arrived yet, I may have surprises when unpacking)

Here are some bullets points about my typing habits and my goals:

• I'm a slow and sloppy touch typist (30WPM, lots of mistakes)

• I type 10-20% french, 30-40% german and the rest in english. And I'm learning russian (let's say 1% russian)

• I user a Mac since 30 years roughly

• From time to time (very sporadic) I do have to use other computers, it's rare but when it happens I am stuck for days (on site at customers).

• I switched to qwerty 15 years ago (I moved to another country, my original keyboard layout, azerty, was not available at all, I was not about to learn yet another local layout (qwertz). Because qwerty was available as well, I chose it thinking I might move to yet another country some time down the road)

• I consider qwerty uncomfortable. My previous layout (azerty) was worse, but I feel qwerty is uncomfortable simply put. I am after comfort first and maintaining my current speed, not necessarily increasing it.

• I do code a bit and my time spent coding is increasing.

• I travel often (well outside of pandemic day-to-day insanity), and while traveling I type on my lap quite a bit, where it would not be possible to use an external keyboard. Hence I want to be able to switch back to the laptop layout when needed. I am ok changing the layout on my macbook with Karabiner for example.

• I tried colemak once during a one week holiday, but I could give it only 30 minutes a day which was not sufficient to provide me acceptable speed when I went back to work after a week and I gave up, reverted back to qwerty, it was to hampering to my work productivity.

• I have 30 minutes of free time a day I'd say, the rest is pretty much clockwork. I can't be training hours every day, I just don't have the bandwidth.

Knowing all of the above, is there any advice you can give me? And be frank please — if it's "colemak is not for you", that's fine as well, as long as you tell me why.

I feel I should:
1. first get used to ortholinear layout while keeping qwerty for now
2. use tarmac to switch to colemak progressively (actually I think colemak dhm is what I should go for)

this "feeling" is based on zero facts and science, hence asking for opinions here =)