The Keyboard That Saved My Career

This is my keyboard and it has probably saved my career. It looks kind of ridiculous. I know it's split in half and the keys are arranged in straight columns and people who see it for the first time think I've lost my mind. But the reason I use it is simple. It's the only thing that allows me to type for extended periods of time without pain. So, in this video, I will talk about my keyboard journey and how I finally found a solution that is practical, fun to use, and that helps with my wrist pain as well. When I was growing up in the early 90s and 2000s, keyboards looked different. My first keyboard was this monstrous Logitech thing that had media keys and a volume wheel and a scroll wheel and all these extra buttons. It looked more like a spaceship control panel than a keyboard. If you had one, you definitely felt very powerful. And at school in our computer lab, we had these old school mechanical keyboards. They were heavy and clicky. And you better believe they were dirtier than a public toilet seat at a music festival. These things were absolutely vile. But yeah, that was my glamorous introduction to keyboards. Like most teenagers, I spent an absurd amount of time playing video games, and terms like ergonomics or posture were completely foreign to me. So I spent most of the time at the computer being hunched over like a goblin. And by the time I hit my 20s, I had already developed RSI, repetitive strain injury, which in my case meant that I had constant pain in my forearms and wrists. My physiotherapist told me that this is because of how I was using the mouse and the keyboard. And also because the hands are always angled, the muscles in the forearm shortened. So when I use them, they rub against the bone and this causes inflammation over time, which in my case had already become chronic. To solve the issue, I tried massages, I tried stretches, all kinds of things, but nothing really worked in the long run because the root of the problem was not being treated. It's kind of like putting a bucket under a leaky roof. Sure, it keeps the water away for some time, but unless you go and fix the hole in the roof, the problem doesn't really go away. Next, I ditched my regular mouse for an ergonomic vertical mouse like this. And this helped to some extent, but the mouse is only one part of the equation. After that, I decided to do something about my keyboard layout. I'm from Germany, but the standard German keyboard layout is terrible. Characters that are frequently used like the German or characters that are important for programming like curly braces and braces are uncomfortable to reach. So, I thought that the US layout is much better when it comes to ergonomics for programming. Because of this, I got myself one of these very popular Logitech MX Keys keyboards with a US layout. And this is a great keyboard overall. Great build quality, great feeling keys. The problem for me is that it has a lot of underutilized space. On the right hand side, we have the numpad here and then the arrow keys separating the numpad from the home row. And this in effect means that every time I want to type something, my right hand needs to travel quite a long distance from the mouse to the home row before I can start typing, which is not great for ergonomics. At this point, I was basically in the market again for a smaller keyboard. And I had no big complaints about Logitech. I liked the build quality. I like the connectivity features that you can pair a keyboard with three different machines, which is quite convenient. So, I checked their website and I came across the MX Mechanical Mini and oh boy, this opened Pandora's box and led me down the rabbit hole of mechanical keyboards. This gave me a nostalgia boost that threw me back to my earliest keyboard experiences. And you could even customize the the switches for this keyboard. You could select a brown, a red, or I think the the blue ones depending on how clicky you want the keyboard to be. And I just had to have it. When this keyboard first arrived, it felt great. The keys felt great. Build quality was good. Connectivity is nice. The ergonomics were better because of the lack of the numpad. And my desk felt much cleaner because the keyboard was smaller. But over time, I noticed that while the ergonomics were improving, I still developed some wrist pain again. So, there was still something missing. When I paid close attention to my posture, I realized that my hands were squished inward when typing and rotated outwards. And there were still a lot of unnatural movements that I was making and bringing my hands and fingers into very uncomfortable positions. And so, I did some more research and it led me down a deep rabbit hole of mechanical and erggo keyboards. Eventually, I found split keyboards. They solve this problem because you can simply place the two halves shoulder width apart. They are a bit pricey though because it's a much more niche market. But since this is about my long-term health, I decided to try it anyway. There are plenty of split ergo keyboards out there. But for me, the requirements were clear. First, I wanted something that is pre-built. I'm completely useless with a soldering iron and I don't have tools at home, so building one myself was not an option. Second, it also had to be portable. I'm traveling from time to time and work from different places and I just like to take my keyboard with me and I don't want a huge thing in my backpack. Third, it had to be low profile. A lot of mechanical keyboards have these keys that stick out quite a bit and this means that I would angle my hand again, which I knew would cause wrist pain over time, so it had to be as flat as possible. In the end, this narrowed down my options to two main candidates, the ZSA Voyager or the Keepio Iris Compact Edition. I really like the design of the Voyager and the fact that it's a tiny bit slimmer than the Iris, but I wasn't sure if two thumb keys on either side are sufficient for me. Before I bought the keyboard, I spent a good amount of time drafting the layout that I want to implement on the keyboard in the end. And I just couldn't find the layout that checks all the boxes for me while only requiring two thumb keys. So, the decision was made. I got the Iris and boy was it difficult at first. The Iris has what is called as a orolinear layout, which means that the keys are arranged in vertical columns rather than diagonally as in a staggered layout on a traditional keyboard. Supposedly, this is much better for ergonomics, but it definitely takes some time to get used to it. Also, since it has less keys, for example, the arrow keys are completely missing and it has less modifier keys, I spent a good amount of time tweaking the layout and reprogramming it a couple of times until I finally found a configuration that clicked for me. Once I was happy with the setup though and got used to it, it was a complete gamecher for me. This just feels so much more comfortable and so much more natural to type on. And my pain is basically gone at this point. Now, this is starting to sound a bit like an ad, but it's not. It's not a sponsored video. I'm sure that any of the other keyboard alternatives like the Voyager or the Moonlander or the Arodox keyboard or the Glo 80 or whatever, they all provide the same ergonomic benefit, but I don't have any experience with them at this point, so I can't really comment on that. I'm just a satisfied customer of the Iris keyboard, and I have no complaints with it after about 1 and a half years of using it. So, I can fully recommend it. It checks pretty much all of the boxes for me. However, of course, someone else might have different criteria. If you're interested in the exact keyboard that I have, I reached out to K.io for an affiliate link, and I put it in the description box down below. So, if you feel like supporting the channel and you decide to grab something from K.Oio through that link, I will get a small kickback at no extra cost to you. Honestly, if I stuck with regular keyboards, I'm not sure if I could have kept working in this field long term. My career depends on using a computer all day, and pain was making it well painful. So finding an ergonomic split keyboard that works for me didn't just simply incrementally improve my setup. I think it literally saved my ability to work in this career long term.

I've had wrist pain since my teens. By the time I hit my 20s, it was bad enough that I wasn't sure I could keep working at a keyboard-heavy job long term. Over the years I tried everything: vertical mice, new layouts, compensatory exercises, fancy keyboards, you name it. Nothing really solved the problem. What finally did? A split ergo keyboard. It looks ridiculous, it took a lot of time to set up and remap, but it lets me type for hours without pain. In this video I'll walk through my keyboard journey: From my first maximalist "spaceship" Logitech, to switching layouts, to falling down the mechanical rabbit hole, to finally going split. ⌛ Timestamps -------------------------------------------------- 00:00 When keyboard were tanks 01:05 Why my wrists hurts 02:10 Early fixes that weren't enough 05:01 My setup now & results 🔗 Links -------------------------------------------------- My QMK keymap: https://github.com/hendrikmi/qmk-keymap ⌨️ Split keyboards -------------------------------------------------- My Board Keebio Iris CE (affiliate): https://keeb.io/products/iris-ce-keyboard-kit?ref=henrymisc Other Popular Manufacturers ZSA: https://www.zsa.io/ Moergo: https://www.moergo.com/collections/glove80-keyboards Kinesis: https://kinesis-ergo.com/ Dygma: https://dygma.com/ Keychron: https://www.keychron.com/ #mechanicalkeyboards