In the spirit of 'perfect practice makes perfect' as opposed to plain old 'practice makes perfect', I've just gone back to amphetype following a reinvigoration from misterw and dr. dre

Friday Feb 10, 31 Days since I began.
34 WPM Average in Typeracer
This is a 5 WPM increase over last week or a 17% increase

As I suspected the increase in speed is going to be much less from now on.

According to this site
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/good-typ … 71789.html
Average typing speed is 38-40 WPM
Since in typing, I'm pretty average, within a month I've worked up to be 10% below average.

My goal is modest I 'll be satisfied to hit that 38-40wpm average.

Not bad,  I've almost shaken over 40 years of qwerty habits and muscle memory in  in a month.

another tip while learning: LOOK DOWN AT THE KEYBOARD

Who cares what "they say" you're supposed to do. When piano players are learning, you think they don't look down?

Yes eventually you want to be able to not have to look. But while learning, there is no harm. In fact, you should probably look down until you have it so ingrained in your memory. Then practice 'visualizing' it to see if you can do it from memory. And then practice not looking

You're either practicing your mistakes, or you're practicing doing it correctly.

i'll have to respectfully disagree with misterw on this one. If one is attempting to learn colemak on a keyboard where the keycaps are still qwerty, to look down at the keyboard, O, that way madness lies..

When I learn a new piano piece, I don't look at the keys. I'm busy looking at the notes! :-) I don't think I've looked at the piano keys since I was an absolute newb. Maybe in the very beginning it's okay.

Similarly, after a little while I found that I preferred to have an on-screen or by-screen layout helper image instead of looking at the actual keys. PKL has a neat on-screen image (that I've customized).

I would agree that having correct letters on keycaps will give a peace of mind.
I actually passes through Tarmak looking to relabled keycaps, that was my way to learn Colemak and do not affect productivity at work. Because I never touch typed in qwerty, there was no other use of Tarmak for me.
But here is the problem, having correct Colemak labels you start to forget qwerty. I've switched my phone to Colemak as well, and after couple month found out that I'm not so fluent in qwerty "visualizing" any more, so I've switched it back.
Not been fluent in qwerty in this qwerty world would be treated as a professional incompetency.

if you already know where the keys are, then fine. this guy is typing at 30wpm. what do you think he is? an absolute newb. he will improve loads by looking down and ingraining muscle memory that way.

yes, and creating muscle memory is a lot easier when you can SEE the preceding/following keys that you need to press, instead of having to remember where they are first. i'm relearning to use left index for qwerty 'c'. you think i don't know where 'c' is on qwerty? of course i do. but i need the muscle memory for the other keys as you mentioned: ce, cr, ct, cv, bc. looking down helps me ingrain many repetitions of that, mistake-free. if i dont look, i just practice ingraining my mistakes. bad. in a short period, then i no longer have to look

not looking while learning is putting the cart before the horse. its like saying, "basketball players don't look at the ball when they dribble it, so don't look down!" duh: eventually you want to get to that point. but if your hands/wrists dont have the coordination yet, you better be looking down. then once you are at a certain level, THEN you practice not looking.

I guess dakvol would have brand new piano players learn the piano by placing a cover over their hands so they can never look down at the piano keys either.

Just lol.

As a self proclaimed long term keyboard hobbyist who types at 60wpm, you may want to be less rigid about your stances regarding getting better at typing.

I'm 100% certain that you too would get better if you spent some time looking down while practicing. At your ability, there's no where to go but up. It can't hurt to try, can it? But then you may have to come back and admit that it actually works to help you get better.

I never felt the need to put a diagram on the monitor. I know where the keys are. The layout is getting learned in a first week or so. Problem is not to remember where is the key, but to press it correctly without seen, that exact key, not the neighbor one and not in between of keys, and do it quickly.

Wednesday Update,
Wow once I hit 34 WPM on Friday every letter up in typeracer is an extreme struggle.
Finally I hit 36 WPM yesterday and 37 WPM today.

It took   two  days to go from 34 to 35.
another two days to go from 35  to 36
And next day 37.

I think tomorrow I have to go back to basics if I'm going to reach 40wpm+
going back to basics mean doing a typing test from first lesson to last and playing Meteor on Senselang.

One of the pitfalls of typing tests is the danger of making the same error over and over again.
thus reinforcing the errors.

Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect!

On a different note I've noticed is that even though I'm practicing hours a day along with my
regular office typing,  I'm not feeling finger or hand strain.
Colemak is truly easier on the hands than QWERTY

Nice progress, Thumbs! Looking good.

A tip about the error reinforcing: I've taught myself to delete errors with Ctrl+Back (which can be typed easily using Extend+T+O!) so the whole word with the error is deleted and I have to type it again in its entirety! This may actually be faster in many cases, as you don't have to mash the Back button the right number of times and then pick up mid-stream. It feels easier on the brain.

But more importantly, it enforces typing that word correctly! So if you mistype certain words a lot, you'll at least end up typing them correctly once for each mistake, and your last typing experience of those words will always be typing them right! I believe you may need more drilling to actively unlearn an error pattern if it's become ingrained, but I think this trick may help you along the way at least!