for those primarily working in photoshop and the like: buy a wacom tablet and change regularly between mouse and pen. and yeah, have a break now and then.

Nice article. Sports is known as an important way to get better at almost anything, such as work, concentration, health, etc.. The thing is, people are lazy to do so, or to even start. For those who are lazy, do some sports on the first or second time and you will start liking the feeling. The laziness is just on the beginning.

There doesn’t happen to be a Firefox addon or something that tells you when to get up and take a break, is there?

Don’t you people know that nothing is more likely to induce back, neck, and wrist pain than reading a post like this? Seriously, though, I was able to get control of my wrist pain by switching to an ergonomic keyboard, but now I find that a few hours out with my laptop bring on crushing pain by evening. Not to mention missing keys when I switch back to the big, spacious home keyboard. Any recommendations for portable ergonomic keyboards or other solutions?

In my freshman year of college ten years ago I ended up going to the physical therapy clinic my wrists hurt so bad. I wasn’t even doing all that much work at the computer. It was just a fairly new thing and I had LAN access in my dorm room and I was on it a lot, and I wasn’t using a good desk or anything.

Since then, it’s been about having the desk at the right height (I use an IKEA desktop and legs) and putting the keyboard far enough back that my forearms rest on the desk.

Another crucial thing for me is how I use the mouse. I learned I’m much, much more comfortable with laptops, where the touchpad is below the spacebar, allowing my hands to move down to it at a natural angle. So, when I’m on a keyboard/desktop computer, I position the mouse in the same place. Not off to the right, but with the cord around the keyboard’s corner, and the mouse centered in front of me. Your right (or left) arm should not be angled out and maneuvering a mouse.

congratulations for the recent recognition!!

I’d recommend taking a look at a company called Evoluent:

http://www.evoluent.com

They produce a vertical mouse, which allows your forearm to remain straight instead of the twisted state of a regular mouse. They also produce a keyboard with the numeric pad on the left side so that when typing and using the mouse your arms remain straight. They’re a tad expensive, but I switched to both after developing wrist pains and the pain has gone away.

Another often overlooked, is that your monitor should be elevated to a position where you are looking straight ahead at it, not down, which puts strain on your neck.

Add to the other software solutions “RSIBreak” for Linux and BSD.

URLs:
http://lightoflamp.blogspot.com/2007/04/its-time-to-relax-my-friend.html (my relevant blog post)
http://www.rsibreak.org (program’s webpage)

I find I’m much comfortable with a laptop, but not if it’s too far away that I have to stretch out my arms too far. The only thing is, the fingers on my left hand become very stiff when I have to type in French, mainly because the grave/tilda key is too far away. Typing ctrl+grave (for things like è) makes my fingers go all stiff. Any tips for this?

Forcing yourself to take non-computer breaks works really well. It’ll also reduce stress.

I use Desk Doctor. I spend a lot of time on the mouse and a fair bit of typing and it’s exercises really tune in to what you need. It uses an interactive assessment to figure out what your problem is so the exercises are much more specific. I can feel a huge difference with this program (I tried RSI guard and workrave too.) There are 100 exercises in it and the girl in the exercise videos is hot!

guilty as charged!!
I find if I am working during the day, dont go back on at night and relax, it helps limit this and also limit burntness with your job

Hi

I saw the comment about retraining your other hand to give which ever hand a rest, but it might be worth be very careful about this, because ultimately you could end up with RSI in both hands.

I also read the comment about the evoluent mouse, which is a brilliant product, it’s helped alot of people I know with RSI. But another great mouse which works well with MAC’s is the ergonomic mouse. This is a link to our website, but if you type in Airobic mouse, you can get other companies selling it as well. One of the bonus with the Airobic mouse is that it comes with a clickless software programme that you can try for 30 days. This allows you to minimise the clicks you have to use, by just hovering the pointer over something to use that function i.e. open on the toolbar.

I’ve not had any feedback from anyone whose used the clickless software in Firefox, so it would be really interesting to know if it works as well in Firefox.