Using the Dvorak layout in FreeBSD
Those of us that type a lot will eventually begin to feel the effects of such an activity manifest as some sort of pain, most likely carpal tunnel syndrome. As somebody who has touch typed for the better part of 15 years, I definitely feel the effects every now and then. Several years ago I heard of an alternate keyboard layout called "Dvorak" that allegedly helped reduce the stress on your hands, but could potentially give you a free speed boost. I won't go into the nitty-gritty details, but encourage you to take a look at the Wikipedia article.
There are two ways to use the Dvorak layout: in the console and in Xorg. They're both quite easy to switch to as well.
To switch over your console, you can either run the sysinstall program as root or just manually specify the keymap using kbdcontrol -l "us.dvorak". Using sysinstall ensures that the Dvorak layout is retained after a reboot, whereas the kbdcontrol command does not. Switching back is as simple as using kbdcontrol -l "us" and removing the entry from rc.conf if you used sysinstall.
For Xorg users, simply open a terminal and run the following to toggle back and forth:
setxkbmap dvorak setxkbmap us
If you are using a desktop environment such as Gnome or KDE, you should be able to change the layout using the appropriate control panel.
I hope to work my way up to my QWERTY speed fairly quickly and be proficient in both layouts, but I'll certainly need to practice. For the record, this post took about 40 minutes to compose with my layout switched to Dvorak...