habits have formed from the messed up layout that is qwerty . which is a very bad layout and only became the standard due to how typewriters work . but heads up if ur trying to improve typing there always alt layouts than many use to gain wpms . like dvorak coleman workman and many others

That's why there are ortholinear keyboards, in which the keys are arranged in a uniform grid, with each finger's "assigned" keys in a straight column.

https://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/what-is-an-ortholinear-keyboard/

I've considered one in the past but I'm tied to a laptop 70% of my time. I don't want to adapt back and forth caonstantly, sadly.

Quite ironic for Das to write that article when they don’t make Ortholinear keyboards, or support QMK which is a shame since their build quality is nice

Not really sure you would need to improve further than 60 WPM because writing decent sentences for an article at 60 WPM is a skill that I would kill.

On the other hand, I think the greatest improvement if you are already typing well is to type perfectly all the time. Not really sure if finger placements really matter that much since I'm just hover typing almost all the time for ergonomic reasons.

I noticed that. It's as if GMK were to write a blog post about PBT keycaps.

That's why I'm switching to ortho

This issue is a rabbit hole unto itself, that you can dive headfirst into, as deep as you'd like.

It is also why I designed the layout for my work keyboard entirely from scratch.
I wanted my keyboard to work how I think keyboards should work.
I absolutely had to have a numpad, and a split spacebar, so I started with that, then added on from there.

The resulting layout makes much more sense to me than a standard staggered keyboard.
It allows me to get the entire functionality of my 1800s, including a proper numpad, into a 60% case, with HHKB blockers.

More importantly, it also allows me to switch between alphas/arrows/nav cluster/numpad, on the fly, without moving my right hand anywhere.
That alone has made traditional keyboards extremely annoying to me now.
Unfortunately, I still have to use them in various situations.

https://preview.redd.it/48x408ajo79a1.jpeg?width=1208&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d98c284233db5ab640e3b3f9bf676eab995874fd

There's no one way to type. Whichever you chose though, it quickly becomes to feel natural. I learned the "correct" way, and it feels completely normal and natural to me now, and my fingers just go where they are supposed to go without even thinking about it. If you want to learn the way you describe, then go for it. You can always fine tune things as you go along.

While it seems to make more sense to type the way you suggest in your diagram, there will be situations where it is worse. Words starting with, or containing WA for example would then be more difficult compared to the correct way. With QWERTY, whenever you think you've found a way to cheat the system, you usually pay for it somewhere else. It's tempting to learn Dvorak or another layout, but for me, the ability to type well on everyone else's keyboard outweighed the more efficient layout.

Learn how you feel comfortable though. At the end of the day, if you end up being able to type accurately without looking at the board, then that's all that matters.

Row stagger does not make sense because it was not designed to make sense. It is a remnant of the typewriter technical reasons where there had to be levers going north from each key, so the rows were staggered so that the levers would not intersect in space.

I jumped to column-staggered boards the moment they became available, have proper keyboards both at home and the office, and regard the laptop keyboard only as a failsafe device.

And this is why QWERTY is still the dominant layout.