One challenge with the Planck that I did not anticipate is that I have trouble hitting the (little) left shift key, and I miss having a right shift key (the Planck has none). It is especially surprising to me because I rarely used the right shift key before I made it a goal last year to use right-shift all the time, rather than stretch my left pinky crazy distances. I think one reason left-shift is more difficult to hit is that the Colemak-DH layout keeps my fingers on the home row all the time. When I type QWERTY, my hands fly all around the keyboard like a concert pianist’s, so it feels more normal to shift my entire left hand to press the shift key.

To mitigate my shift problem, I enabled the AutoShift feature of my keyboard’s firmware. If I press and hold a letter key—which feels a bit like a firm press rather than a ling press—a capital letter is produced. It is a really smart feature, but I am still getting used to it, and it interrupts my flow.