‘QWERTY’ and Your Adaptation

Do you ever wonder about the arraignment of the keys on the keyboard? It seems odd to have them in such a seemingly random arrangement, especially since we have other specifically helpful orders to put our letters in like in order of the alphabet or commonly use words.

The reason for the order of the keys dates back to 1868. The inventor of the typewriter was a man named Christopher Sholes. He intentionally produced the QWERTY keyboard, which gets its name from the six first letters that appear in the upper left of the board, as an effort to slow down the performance of the user typing. Why you ask? The mechanisms of the typewriter couldn’t handle too much speed. Type too many keys too quickly and the gears and levels of the machine would literally jam up. A familiar set of keys, then, would mean typists would move too quickly and break the machine.

This fun fact is a wonderful example of accommodation. The order of the keys that was intentionally designed to slow us down was no match for the evolution of human skill. The order of the keys has been accommodated by all those who’ve spent any significant amount of time on the keys to the point in which most of us type faster on a QWERTY keyboard than we would on one where the letters were arranged in order of the alphabet.

The human species has survived because of our specific ability to accommodate stress and adapt to it. Want a new normal? Expose yourself to environments that demands the expression you desire. Get in the rooms with the intelligence you desire. Get in the rooms with the strength you desire. Get in the rooms with the goals you desire.

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach