If you look into the featured image carefully enough, you would probably notice that this keyboard is a little bit off. No, it is not because of the little green key with a leaf on it. It is rather the layout of the keyboard. Usually, the 1st row on a keyboard with English layout should be QWERTY, thus it is also called QWERTY-layout. However, this one is JRHWPQ, clearly different from the most commonly used keyboard layout.

And no, it is also not Dvorak, or Colemak, or Workman, or any other well known keyboard layout. It is completely customized by myself. I call it ASNSGY-layout — named after the first 5 keys on the 2nd row.

The ASNGY-Layout

The layout was coming from a hobby project. I was obsessed with typing at the time. I practiced typing everyday to improve my typing speed. In the meanwhile, I was also searching for a keyboard which is more comfortable and also durable. So I started to look at DIY-Keyboard, which is by no means a bank-friendly hobby.

I have ordered everything from different Chinese manufacturers, which means the shipping usually lasts at least two to three weeks, which gives me quite a lot of time to dive deeper into this world. It was also the same time when I got to know QMK and VIA — a technology which can remap the keys completely on a keyboard, making a different keyboard layout from the physical level possible. After knowing that, the first idea that came to my mind was, why not make a keyboard layout for myself?

That was the start of a long journey.

I have analysed my typing habit, and I noticed that the single finger 2-grams were the typing speed killer for me. If you are not a 2-finger-typer, and try to type the word “expected” on a QWERTY-layout, you would probably understand what I mean. Your left-hand middle finger will move back and forth to finish typing the word “expected”. Well this is not acceptable for me, I wanted to optimize my typing experience.

By gathering the word frequency statistics from a Wikimedia project and also the similar research for German and Chinese languages, I have collected all the 2-grams frequency data for English, German and Chinese all 3 languages. With the help of a genetic algorithm, I managed to figure out a layout which ensures minimum single finger 2-grams.

However, a new problem comes after that. I don’t know how to type with this new keyboard layout at all. It’s quite ironic because I created the new layout to type faster, but the result was exactly the opposite, I became a 2-finger-typer with the new layout.

So I started to practise with the new layout.

The Bottleneck

I started with about 15 to 20 WPM (words per minute) in March, and I practiced typing almost every other day, sometimes even everyday. After 3 months, my speed has increased to 55 to 60 WPM. But then it stayed there for quite a long time. The more I typed, the more that I felt that I had reached a bottleneck. No matter how hard I try, the typing speed is just not increasing. Sometimes after having practised for a whole day, the typing speed even decreased.

As a “tech-head”, as soon as I have noticed that there is a problem, the first question is always “why”. Why did the problem come up in the first place? I have made a lot of assumptions, like I was not focused enough while typing, or I didn’t look ahead while typing but only tried to type letter after letter. Based on those assumptions, I have tried a lot of different ways to break through the bottleneck. For example, paying more attention while typing, or reading one word ahead while typing the current one and so on. But nothing really helped me, I was feeling frustrated.

The “Bottleneck” was Actually Not a Bottleneck

While completely frustrated, I kind of completely gave up on trying to type faster. I told myself, since I can’t improve my typing speed anymore, I would simply try to type accurately. It would also be great to type without pressing the backspace key. Thus, I shifted my focus from increasing the typing speed to typing accuracy. Immediately, the average typing speed dropped 5 WPM, which I actually expected. If I gave up pushing myself to type faster anymore, it would be normal to see a decrease in typing speed.

But the next day, I noticed that the average typing speed caught up with the previous number again, with the accuracy still at a relatively high level.

This surprised me and puzzled me quite a little bit — I could improve my typing speed by not trying to type faster? But in the next blind I got enlightened. Maybe a lot of bottlenecks are not bottlenecks. It is only lack of confidence, lack of belief that I can do better with time. This unbalanced mental state created anxiety, frustration and even lowered my confidence, and completely ruined the mood and motivation, which caused the dramatic slow-down of the progress, making me believe that there was a bottleneck, a barrier which I could never go through. And this again ruined my confidence even more, creating an even more unbalanced mental state.

This is a vicious circle. To fix this, I have to try not to type faster.

That sounds a little bit contradictory at the beginning, but once I found the origin of the bottleneck, this is actually very easy to understand. If my focus was not on typing faster anymore, then the ups and downs of typing speed should be quite normal. The more I practise, the slower the progress would be, this is also normal. If I focus too much on increasing the speed, all the agitation, anxiety, low confidence, and so on would all come to me. However, without a certain expectation, the negativities were also not being fueled up anymore, they would simply go away.

From then on, I never tried to push myself to type faster again, and magically, my typing speed slowly started to increase again.

Update on 31. October 2025: my typing speed has reached 65 WPM in August, and reached 70 WPM in October.

The “Non-Bottleneck” being Actually a Bottleneck

With the main problem being solved, I just took one step back, asking myself why I was having this problem in the first place. I noticed that, actually the so-called bottleneck, which is actually the anxiety of “not being good enough”, “not being productive” or “wasting time”, comes from elsewhere.

I was born as a slow person. The modern society has really put a huge pressure on me, since the society is performance oriented. I started to notice that from my high-school time, since then, I always felt that I was being pushed to finish as much as I could to keep competitive.

But slowly, I realised that to adjust myself to be performance oriented is completely meaningless and toxic. The world is big, there is a field where craftsmanship and quality are being valued, instead of quantity. To have this courage not to be productive, and following one’s own pace is probably the most important virtue in this fast-paced society.

Besides, I think the activities of the man-kinds are becoming more and more viable, restricted, direct and short-termed. No matter what you do, you almost always get instant feedback. Otherwise people would lose their patience and move on to the next. In such an environment, we also become more and more short-tempered and have less and less patience. We don’t want to wait in the name of “productive” or “time-saving”. But actually, most of the things need an accumulating phase, until it progresses to the next level. Sometimes I really have to focus on the most boring part of my life, no matter how ugly, agitating, scary or desperate it turns out to be, it is just how it is. I should learn how to accept this kind of life, since it is life itself. I shouldn’t really expect more than that.

I found it interesting that I actually like the minimalist type of music, like dub-techno, ambient house and so on. They are repetitive, they are progressive. If you don’t listen to it carefully, you don’t even notice the change happening between different loops. That’s like a lot of road trips that I have made. Road trips are not like flights, where you sit in a chair, and the plane goes above the clouds, and then goes below the clouds, everything suddenly looks fresh and different. On a road trip, everything changes slowly and progressively. You drive, a few hours later, the scenery looks a little bit different, and you don’t even know how it changes — you won’t find the border separating different types of scenery. That’s exactly how life is. Life is only dramatical if we look into the illusion of the past or into the imagination of the future, but seldom when we are looking at the present moment. Yet the present moment is actually the only thing that we can grasp about life, and it is the only part that we really have control on.

I feel I am a little bit closer to the truth of myself now.