When you are at work or in a social situation, you will inevitably be confronted with situations where your food preferences may get some attention. For example, if you chose not to drink coffee, energy drinks, or soda, or to eat unhealthy foods like pizza or donuts, people will undoubtedly be curious. For some reason, people are not surprised if you chose not to smoke, but if you don’t drink alcohol they wonder if something is wrong with you. Likewise, people may wonder whether you won’t eat pizza because you were previously overweight, you are lactose intolerant, or you have strange food preferences. I usually say that I enjoy eating pizza, donuts, and the like, but try to avoid them. In reality, I usually don’t feel good after consuming caffeine, soda, or any food that contains a lot of sugar. I tell people that I don’t feel good after the sugar high—they usually leave me alone after that.

Some of the biggest challenges and objections I have faced related to my changing keyboard layouts. Learning a new keyboard layout is a significant time investment, and there are many reasonable objections to such an effort. First, although you can change the keyboard layout easily in Windows, Mac, or Linux, most keyboards you can purchase are made with the QWERTY layout printed on them. You can overcome this by purchasing a keyboard in your layout of choice, buying a kit of stickers to relabel the keys, popping off and moving the keys around, or simply learning to touch type the new layout on a keyboard in the QWERTY layout.

In my case, I printed a copy of Dvorak and placed it near my desk for reference while I learned to touch type using Ten Thumbs Typing. I am also bi-layout and can type in either layout. I am, however, much faster in Dvorak and greatly prefer it to QWERTY.

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