In a way, I find there's a bit of a controversy.
Some people swear by the lessons, and others say cold-turkey is the only way to go.
Then, there's this idea that over 2-hr training is not effective. Then, cold-turkey (which is 100% training the first weeks) would definitely violate that rule.
Maybe some stats would help. Could you vote in this thread how you learned colemak, and what your stats were at say 1-month from the beginning? Maybe that way a pattern emerges.
I currently work for an employer who trains employees on a new keyboard layout. It's a pretty big operation, and they've trained thousands of people over the years, so I figure they know a thing or two about how to go about it. Basically what they do is, start the person on lessons for four hours a day. Once the person attains a certain baseline speed and accuracy, they send that person onto the floor to work and (ideally) build up to a higher level.
A reasonable extrapolation from this would be to start out with just lessons for a few hours a day. Once you'd hit some reasonable benchmark (say, 35 WPM at 96% accuracy), then go cold turkey, pushing yourself towards a higher benchmark (say, 70 WPM at 98% accuracy). At that point, you can just coast, or push higher if you want.
Doing it this way, you avoid the main problem with cold turkey: being completely helpless when you start out.
Of course, employees can type whatever they want at home, so it's not 100% cold turkey. I would advise against 100% cold turkey, anyway. Why swap one skill for another when you could have two skills? Why have no choice when you could have choice?
Hi Phynnboi,
I think you are in the best position possible! Are you free to report basic things (without disclosing detail that would bother the company's interest)?
For example, how do you distribute that 4-hour practice? What do people do while in training when they are not typing on the new layout? Do they train on per-finger lessons (like typeFaster) or on general text? Do they need to use a lot of punctuation and symbols -programmers, etc- or just plain text?
to this forum: How did the "2-hr maximum for effective practice, more doesn't help" rule come about?
Thanks!
PS: if you could post actual stats, even very simple, for those 1000s of learners (e.g., average wpm after a week, a month, 3 months) that would be great, although I understand if you can't.
Lessons and cold-turkey aren't opposites. You could do cold-turkey with or without lessons, for instance.
I advise people to do what seems best for them. It will inevitably vary greatly. Look up ezuk's thread for instance - he even learnt Colemak some keys at a time (using the Tarmac transitional Colemak layout), over a period of months... and seems very happy with that. Others have done QWERTY-by-day, Colemak-by-night and reported much better progress than I could manage for instance. It's so individual.
As a general principle though, I agree that you shouldn't do too long training bouts at a time - your brain can't take too much, your body might get hurt and you might burn yourself out on it. As a hobby musician, I know that well. But whether a cold-turkey approach violates that or not depends on exactly how much and how often you type during the day for instance. And I think the 2-hour 'rule' is a rule of thumb and not an absolute. Some of my fellow music students stuck to 1 h per day even, while others did 5 or so.
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