On Habits, the Breaking and Forming of

These days, almost everyone in America is familiar with the QWERTY keyboard. Kids are taught basic typing skills in grade school, it comes standard on keyboards, laptops and phones, and really, what other option is there? Well, there's the Dvorak, for one.

I don't even recall how I heard about it, but when I did a few days ago, I immediately knew I had to try it. With my brother's help, I pulled all the keys off, rearranged them and switched my MacBook over. And I'm not looking back.

The whole thing about the Dvorak is that the arrangement of keys is supposed to allow for faster typing because more words can be spelt without fingers leaving the home row than with a QWERTY. It's even alleged by the creators to help reduce repetitive motion stress such as carpal tunnel. You can read about it here.

Anyway, my question is this: how hard is it to break old habits and form new ones? I enjoy blogging because it forces me to figure out this new layout much more quickly. I dreaded it at first, but I continued making myself type things out for practice and it's making a huge difference. I'm already much faster than I was just 24 hours ago, although it will be sometime before my fingers fly the way they used to.

I read somewhere once that it takes 30 days to make or break a habit. I wonder how true that is? I constantly slip up and type familiar words the way I had with a QWERTY board. On the one hand, I think it will be a lot easier to retrain my brain because I am completely immersed, as they say. I have no option to cheat with the old format while typing. On the other hand, my phone is still QWERTY, along with every other computer in the house. I wonder how that will affect my learning curve?