Do you use your non-dominant hand?

Humans are strange beings. Sometimes think of it - there are two kinds of people on Earth - three kinds to be exact - the ones that prefer using the left hand, the ones that prefer using the right hand, and the extreme minority that can use both naturally, not to mention that most people that are ambidextrous are trained due to various reasons. You want a reason? Try using a can opener with your left hand - god knows why it is designed to suit right hand users more. The chairs in my lecture halls also somewhat prefer right-handers - you will have little space to place your forearm if you write with the left hand.

To be honest, I didn't notice it in the first place, I am a right hander as well. But my friend (who is also a right hander) noticed it and gave me a cry emote. Observant.

Alright back to topic.

Source

Since we have a preference on which hand to use for most tasks, we are more or less more likely to use it for everything possible. Writing, using a mouse, picking up objects, etc. Ignore tasks that requires you to use both hands at the same time (such as typing, I believe you don't type with one single hand?), you probably used your dominant hand for everything. Of course that should not be a problem until you accidentally did something that prevented you from continue doing so (hopefully not). But do you actually try using your other hand there?

I am that kind of guy that loves to abuse stuff. In a good way. I make use of things I have to the very max - hence you understand why I actually managed to squeeze time out of school to write posts every day because come on, 24 hours is a lot (well, not really a lot but is still sufficient). Sometimes I think - we have two hands, can we actually use both of them equally much even if we are not born ambidextrous?

For a period of time I was used to use my left hand to hold the mouse whenever possible. Not for any reason but, just to try using the left hand. It's like a for-fun thing for that period of time to see what I can get from using it. It does not really feel natural in the first few days but I slowly get the hang of it over time. Within a week, I can already move the pointer around the screen accurately enough to not reduce my productivity by too much. It's obviously not really possible for me to transfer my osu! aiming skills from the right hand to the left hand in one week, but for normal usages it already worked pretty well.

Fact: Ever since I use a tablet to play osu! my aiming skills with a mouse becomes nonexistent on either hands, so I can't even transfer them now lmao.

The outcome? I find myself more comfortable working with the left hand holding the mouse. The main reason for this is that I mostly do this in the library, with a notebook in front of me at the same time. So, it is definitely easier for me to just scroll and browse around with the left hand while I write stuff with my right hand. It's generally more efficient because I don't need to switch hands nor have to pick up the pen and put it down again later, hence saving a little time and frustration just in case my pen drops to the ground again or something.

To be honest it is a little surprising that trying to use the other hand does not cause much trouble to me. My friends joked to me that I should try doing the same for mobile games so I can have about 3 times the time to farm stages or something...well, sure, I can do that for Crash Fever but spinning well in Tower of Saviors will just take me forever to train on the left hand lmao. Right now I can handle easy stages but anything harder I will just play it like how I did it for the past few years.

Actually thinking of this, I wonder how people that has their left hand as their dominant hand play most mobile games out there. We were all used to the left hand for movement + right hand for more complex tasks type of controls for most mobile games (including but limited to most mobile MOBA games and literally anything else that uses virtual joysticks such as PUBG and Honkai Impact). Little games has that left hand mode, and the only one that caught my attention is Vainglory's mirror minimap function that moves the minimap to the left side of the screen instead, so right handed users can disable this option to pan the minimap with their right hand, while the left handed players can just do the opposite. It's just a tiny change anyways, but you probably have nothing to tweak if you are playing with their pinpoint touch controls. I guess that such joystick setups had become conventions that everyone follows anyways.

Normal mode

Mirror Minimap

P/s: You don't ask how left handed players play music rhythm games like VOEZ and Cytus. Most charts are designed to be equally challenging for all players no matter which hand you prefer, and even if there are some chart that prefer the right hand over the left hand (there are, in fact), you will still have charts that prefer the opposite. It's equally painful for everyone unless you're a god at it hehe.

I haven't really tried using my other hand for quite an amount of time for anything useful these days anyways, probably I should try using it more and see if it brings a little more benefits than I think.

Until then, see you next time.

--Lilacse