[yuhe00]

Oh, I think you're spot-on. I've definitely spent more time consciously practicing typing and I used to have some bad habits when typing QWERTY (e.g. using the wrong shift for certain characters or typing 'Y' with my left hand). In fact, what initially prompted my interest in custom ortho keyboards was trying to rectify some of my bad habits in QWERTY and finding it really painful on my wrists to touch-type the "proper" way using a standard staggered keyboard.

I think the biggest benefit for me has been exactly that - taking a whole new look at a skill I thought I had figured out - Or going beyond what I thought was my limit by approaching it in a new way. I think the numbers and WPM don't really matter, but it's a nice way for me to personally quantify my improvement and progress over time. That said, I think it would've been impossible to for me to do all this without discarding the familiar (QWERTY) and starting from scratch. In that sense, the layout matters.