I used to type with my right hand too far to the right so it could cover the arrow keys and mouse. My home position would have my index finger somewhere around the L. I had okay speed but terrible accuracy because I had to cover so much territory with too few fingers.
Learning to navigate with hjkl in vi was the turning point for me. I quit treating the bumps on F and J as "some weird thing that touch typists use" and made a conscious effort to always start with my index fingers resting on them, even not actively typing. Accurate vi movement becomes instinctual instead of having to hunt for the keys, and because I could navigate without leaving the home row, it turned into a virtuous cycle.
vi-style browser navigation add-ons further reduce the need to leave the home row. Vimperator and Pentadactyl were complete browser makeovers for vim enthusiasts, but they went away with the move to WebExtensions. I now use vimium which behaves mostly like a normal browser but retains the critical navigation keybindings. Even when simply reading a web page, I'm sitting right on the home row, with the two most-used keys (j to scroll down, and f to click a link) sitting right under my index fingers.
Switching to a laptop with a centered tenkeyless keyboard also helped a lot. There's no longer a temptation to have my hand float right. The trackpoint helps too - it's slower and less precise than the trackpad, but I make up the time by not needing to move down and back (the trackpad is still better when doing more than a single point and click though). When using a desktop with a traditional mouse, I center the QWERTY section of the keyboard and put the mouse on the left. I learned to mouse ambidextrously within a week or two and my hands no longer have to rest at weird angles.
Remapping Caps to Ctrl is another important home-row improvement. Ctrl is used frequently, usually chorded, and the ones on the bottom require contorting your hands to make it work. Bonus: I can use Ctrl-[ with my fingers still on f and j instead of reaching up to hit Esc, which is needed frequently in vi.
After making the conscious effort to position my hands correctly, everything else fell into place. My accuracy went up, which meant I had fewer times I'd have to look down and reposition, which meant I could achieve much better typing flow. I went from 30-40 WPM with poor accuracy to 60-80 WPM with pretty good accuracy over a couple years, without putting any additional effort toward training.
Learning to navigate with hjkl in vi was the turning point for me. I quit treating the bumps on F and J as "some weird thing that touch typists use" and made a conscious effort to always start with my index fingers resting on them, even not actively typing. Accurate vi movement becomes instinctual instead of having to hunt for the keys, and because I could navigate without leaving the home row, it turned into a virtuous cycle.
vi-style browser navigation add-ons further reduce the need to leave the home row. Vimperator and Pentadactyl were complete browser makeovers for vim enthusiasts, but they went away with the move to WebExtensions. I now use vimium which behaves mostly like a normal browser but retains the critical navigation keybindings. Even when simply reading a web page, I'm sitting right on the home row, with the two most-used keys (j to scroll down, and f to click a link) sitting right under my index fingers.
Switching to a laptop with a centered tenkeyless keyboard also helped a lot. There's no longer a temptation to have my hand float right. The trackpoint helps too - it's slower and less precise than the trackpad, but I make up the time by not needing to move down and back (the trackpad is still better when doing more than a single point and click though). When using a desktop with a traditional mouse, I center the QWERTY section of the keyboard and put the mouse on the left. I learned to mouse ambidextrously within a week or two and my hands no longer have to rest at weird angles.
Remapping Caps to Ctrl is another important home-row improvement. Ctrl is used frequently, usually chorded, and the ones on the bottom require contorting your hands to make it work. Bonus: I can use Ctrl-[ with my fingers still on f and j instead of reaching up to hit Esc, which is needed frequently in vi.
After making the conscious effort to position my hands correctly, everything else fell into place. My accuracy went up, which meant I had fewer times I'd have to look down and reposition, which meant I could achieve much better typing flow. I went from 30-40 WPM with poor accuracy to 60-80 WPM with pretty good accuracy over a couple years, without putting any additional effort toward training.