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Comment by NickNaraghi | Hacker News Reader

If you wanted to go in the other direction, you could achieve more productivity with faster mouse skills. The competitive FPS genre has spawned a bunch of aim training tools[0] to improve muscle memory.

[0] https://www.3daimtrainer.com/

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I'm astonished by how far those aim trainer tools go haha, and how popular they are. I discovered Aimlabs[1] recently, which seems like the most popular one, and it has 6 000 people playing right now.

For us keyboard geeks, there is monkeytype: https://monkeytype.com/

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/714010/Aimlabs/

As someone who went down the keyboard only blackhole, I've rebounded all the way to mouse maximization. Mice are nice! Another tip that really helped me is embracing good mouse acceleration (i.e. not the Windows or Mac built in garbage). This tool has honestly made using a mouse at least 3x better for me: https://github.com/RawAccelOfficial/rawaccel

If you wanted to go in the other direction, you could achieve more productivity with faster mouse skills.

I was always in the camp that believed that the keyboard was always faster than mouse for complex workflows.

Then a couple of weeks ago I spent most of a day in a hospital emergency room with someone, and couldn't believe the way those E.R. nurses fly through the menus and options in Epic using just a mouse.

I'm now closer to believing that "muscle memory is muscle memory." But I suspect it only works if the windows appear in the exact same place all the time.

I think muscle memory is a huge part of it. I've seen both the slow hunt and peck sort of folks working on keyboard only apps in auto parts stores and I've seen the guys who can fly through all the screens like a wizard.

you should see people who play competitive fps games fly through windows menus and websites. the reason I think mousing is superior to keyboard is when you attain a high skill level of eye hand coordination, you are completely adaptable to any GUI.

How do you remove the travel time for the right hand between the mouse and keyboard. The problem isn't the mousing itself, its the dual input responsibility of the right hand.

Maybe if you're doing a job that doesn't involve typing whatsoever, silly stuff like that competitive FPS adjacent mouse skills might help, but for 99% of us, this is just a complete waste of time.

Replacing software with poor keyboard navigation support with better, more modern alternatives will literally do 10x more for your productivity than faster mouse skills.

Mouse aim training has to be the saddest way to improve productivity I've seen anyone suggest.

RIP my hand by RSI

A few months ago I switched to a vertical mouse and can’t recommend it enough.

I couldn't adapt to the fact that, when I click, I have to be mindful of not moving the mouse sideways with the right amount of finger pressure.

I quickly got used to mine. It’s not exactly at a 90 degree angle to the desk, the finger pushes about as much down as to the side, and since it’s a natural pinching gesture the thumb on the other side stops any remaining horizontal force. Just find a mouse that has a good design, I’ve seen some I could never use.

I recently tried it but my muscle memory just refused to cope. I used to do a lot of competitve fps gaming and its hard to imagine a different way to hold a house. I do use a kineses ergonomic keyboard though but adapting to that felt much more normal than the mouse stuff idk why

to make mouse movement faster, you could write an app that uses the keyboard to move the mouse to a certain quadrant for you

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