For the last 2-3 months Iāve been learning how to touch-type with the DVORAK layout, after getting interested in the improved ergonomics of a layout thatās predominately home-row-centric. Iām really enjoying it actually, and do feel a major improvement to my comfort level when it comes to typing (especially considering that I work a full-time development job and also yap a ton in entries to this blog/digital garden)
Today I hit my record best typing speed with it thus far at 85wpm without errors (My QWERTY PR is about 120wpm). But thatās besides the point, I wanted to write a quick note about a phenomena Iāve noticed in myself where sometimes while trying to hit a good speed, Iāll suddenly get the feeling that I made a typo somewhere, and rapidly backspace the entire word. Often times there was an actual error, but it feels just as frequent that I just delete a completely well-spelt word, or far more characters than I had made the error in.
Iām not sure if this is purely a by-product of trying to be quick, but I definitely have an ingrained muscle-memory of spamming backspace to get rid of mistaken words (as opposed to the shorter ā„+ā« shortcut), and it seems that, combined with the fact that I was naturally making more frequent mistakes with a new keyboard layout, has resulted in me instinctively deleting words even where I havenāt messed up.
I wonder if thereās an actual name to this phenomena, maybe Iāll write a follow-up if I find anything about it.