[dulakian]

I switched to dvorak over 10 years ago. It was worth it for RSI issues I was developing. I did 2 things that helped tremendously. I printed out the new keyboard layout and taped it to the wall above and behind my monitor. Instead of looking at the keyboard, I would look at the layout on the wall. I also taped a piece of paper to the top of the keyboard, and put my hands on the keys with the paper draped over my hands, so the qwerty keys of the keyboard would not distract me, and I was forced to look at the wall sign instead of the keys. I spent an entire weekend typing the sentence "The three lazy dogs jumped over the quick brown fox." That weekend got me to a slow but manageable speed. Over the next couple weeks I improved in terms of speed and accuracy, and now I can touch type faster than on qwerty, with no RSI issues.

A few years later I switched to a split keyboard which helped even more, especially with correct typing posture. I now use an ErgoDox EZ keyboard, with my own custom dvorak based layout, and am very happy over all. I can switch back to qwerty when necessary, but it takes a good 5 minutes for it to click in my head and then I can touch type, though not as fast because I am rusty at it.