Productivity Overkill: I Reinvented The Keyboard For 2023.
Ah, the keyboard. To say that the keyboard is an instrument and that words are our notes, as Jason Kravitz put it, almost seems like an understatement. The keyboard is more than just an instrument of creativity, it’s an instrument of communication and, as such, the key to our digital world.
If instruments, far more limited in their expression and utility than the keyboard, have continually been iterated on and improved over centuries, why is it that keyboards are so static in their layout? Sure, there are Colemak, Dvorak, and other keyboard layouts out there that purportedly increase typing efficiency but that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about the actual functionality of the keyboard’s non-Alphanumeric keys. Namely function keys and modifier keys.
How I Radically Rethought My Keyboard Layout
Trimming The Fat
Take a look at your keyboard for a second. Take stock of how many duplicate keys there are on your keyboard.
Two shift keys
Two alt/option keys
Two ctrl keys
Two command/windows keys.
If you are, like me, someone who only really interacts with modifier keys on the left-hand side of the keyboard, this means that you have up to four additional keys that can be remapped to something more useful.
But that’s not all. Take a look at your function keys again. My Q1 Pro has a knob. It also has function keys dedicated to volume up, volume down, and mute. Since I don’t use the knob for video editing, I have 3 additional keys that can also be remapped.
If that weren’t enough, you’ll often find function keys that are meaningless to you in your workflow. I have ‘Mission Control’ on the Mac mapped to a hot corner so I don’t need to have it on my keyboard. I never use Launch Center either so that’s 2 additional keys that can be remapped.
Other lost pieces of keyboard real estate are on the home, page up, page down, and delete keys. I’ve never found any actual use for them. So I remapped them.
All in all, by doing this exercise I freed up 10 keys. But you may free up to 13-14 depending on how radical you want to be.
Two More Key Changes
Another change I decided to make was to switch up the placement of the ‘Caps Lock’ and ‘Tab’ keys. These keys are rarely used and therefore make more sense to be on the right-hand side of my keyboard, along with other functionality which I interact less with.
My Replacements
So far I’ve detailed the keys I’ve remapped but what did I remap to?
Here’s a full list of changes I made:
Tab= Hyper Key
Description: While I’m not the first one to bring back the Space Cadet Keyboard’s Hyper Key, I’ve decided to go about it in a slightly different way. Instead of mapping it to ‘Command’, ‘Option’, ‘Control’, and ‘Shift’, I’ve omitted the ‘Shift’ key and have assigned the aforementioned key combination to the Omni Key below.
Caps = Omni Key
Same as above plus ‘Shift’ key. I decided to name this one ‘Omni’ and not ‘Hyper’ like many others have done before because it seems like a more apt-description.
Right Command = Meta
Remapped shift+command+option.
These 3 keys are basically modifier key combinations that are hard to press on their own. Furthermore, since they’re unlikely to be assigned functions at the OS level this means that they’re ripe for remapping.
How I organize them logically is as follows:
Hyper = Automations. These are specific automations I’ve set with Apple Script or Keyboard Maestro.
Omni = My hotkey combo of choice in any of the apps I use.
Meta = Secondary hotkey functionality. For example, my color picker app is mapped to the color picker key. Meta + Colorpicker key reveals the color selection window (whereas a single keypress is simply the dropper)
F1 = Brightness Down
F2 = Brightness UP
F3 = Keyboard Brightness Down
F4 = Keyboard Brightness Up
These four keys are in different locations on my keyboard. I figured I should lump them together since they all have to do with controlling brightness.
F5 = Quick Share
F6 = Quick Task
F7 = Quick Note
F8 = Clipboard
F9 = Quick Case
These keyboard shortcuts replace others that I never or rarely used. Instead, I worked to analyze my workflow and identify interactions that I did frequently and which I could use a shortcut to with a single button press. Quick Share allows me to post social media messages seamlessly depending on what key combo I press, quick tasks create a new entry in my task manager, quick note creates a new note in Obsidian, Clipboard shows me everything I’ve copied in the past month, and quick case allows me to change anything to Title case – quite useful for an advertiser like me.
Del = Drop Picker
I oftentimes need to select a color that I’ve come across on the internet. Whether that be a client’s branding or an ad I’ve added to my swipe file. Mapping it to a single key makes my workflow much more efficient.
Pg Down = Tab
This follows my logic of remapping keys that are less frequently used to the right side rather than the left. Some folks remove the tab key altogether. I still find it useful – just not useful enough to take up a prominent key on the left-hand side of my keyboard.
Pg Up = Caps
Again, a lot of people remove caps lock. I still use it frequently enough that it deserves a small placement on the right hand of my keyboard.
Home = AI
This was a game-changer for me. Now with just the push of a button, I can access all the knowledge that ChatGPT offers. What a productivity boon!
Right Option = Emoji
Award-winning scripts have been written in Emoji. It’s time we embrace it and make it a part of our keyboard layout. I’m not particularly innovative in this regard – I was inspired by the latest version of the Magic Keyboard (which I was using before the Keychron Q1 Pro)
The Next Step After Design: Printed Keycaps
Once I had embarked on this journey and finished it, I realized I needed new keycaps. While not necessary (I’m a touch-typist), I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I shopped around for a while, hitting up sellers on Etsy and a few niche websites. Luckily I came across a service called Goblintechkeys which had an affordable price and offered designers who could make sure alignment was spot on.
GoblinTechKeys was extremely responsive and allowed me unlimited revisions so I could get the keyboard layout ‘just right’. Furthermore, the shipping was affordable and quick — and I didn’t even pay any import fees!
What About You?
This post is not meant to be the objective best Keyboard layout. Such a thing does not exist. Productivity is inherently personal which means that you must go on your own soul-searching journey in order to find a keyboard layout that’s optimized for your workflow.
That being said, if you don’t have the time to do what I just spent several months doing, I’m happy to share in the fruits of my labor.
Sign up below and I’ll send you my Karabiner Elements script so that you can make your keyboard function the same as mine.
