Are you like many people in this keyboarding age whose arms, wrists, or hands hurt from typing or mousing too much? Even if you don’t have full blown RSI or carpal tunnel, pain after using the computer too much can be disabling. Also, pain that only happens for a little while after you use the computer can be a signal that you may be in store for worse if you don’t change the way you do things.
These suggestions are arranged roughly in order of how drastic they are – I suggest that you go through the list in order, doing the things suggested at each step before proceeding to the next step. And please, see your doctor about any unusual pain or other symptoms – a blog article is never any substitute for proper medical advice!
Take Breaks
Edited to add this section 19 Jan – Thanks to Ian for the reminder in the comments section.
Taking regular rest breaks – even if they’re only 30 seconds long – is vital to give your body time to move and relieve the strain of using a computer.
There are applications which can remind you to take both short and long breaks – short breaks are usually under a minute, just time for you to shake out your wrists and look away from the screen, where long breaks are 5-10 minutes for getting up and stretching and moving totally away from the computer where possible.
Generally these applications are very configurable and some offer fancier functions such as guiding you through body-friendly break exercises or offering a way to postpone a break for a short amount of time. Here are some that ATMac recommends:
Ergonomics
Make sure that your work area is arranged as ergonomically as possible. This will reduce strain on all parts of your body including wrists, arms, shoulders, neck, and back. Simply rearranging the height of your monitor or keyboard, for example, can make a huge difference in comfort.
It is a little more difficult for laptop users to arrange their space ergonomically, but it is still possible to make improvements. Here it is some information about optimal ergonomics for desktop and laptop computer users:
Keyboard Shortcuts
It’s generally accepted that using a mouse requires more arm movement than the keyboard, and according to the MouseLess website it also puts more stress on the neck and underside of the forearm. Certainly moving between keyboard and mouse requires significantly more movement than staying with the keyboard.
The good news about all that is you can reduce the amount of stress on your “mousing arm” by minimising your use of the mouse. Print out the basic OS X keyboard shortcuts handout and stick it up near your screen when you can easily refer to it while you’re computing. Use a program such as KeyCue to help you learn and remember keyboard shortcuts specific to the programs you use. With just these two simple techniques you can drastically reduce the number of times you reach for the mouse each day, and hence reduce the extra stress on your mouse arm.
Change Your Mouse
A different type of mouse won’t remove the stress entirely but an ergonomic mouse can reduce mouse-related strain on your arm. If the new mouse is sufficiently different then it could also move the stress around to different arm muscles – this might give the currently-strained parts of your arm time to heal if you also use the other techniques in this list.
There are a lot of different options for moving your mouse pointer around the screen, these are just some of them:
- External trackpads and tablets (can’t do multi-touch)
- Use your iPod Touch/iPhone as an external multi-touch trackpad with an application such as PearPad
- Vertically oriented mouse
- Left handed mouse
- Joystick mouse
These are just a smattering of the possible pointing devices. With a little research on google, using terms like “ergonomic mouses”, “ergonomic trackball”, and “mouse alternatives” you should be able to find many more which could suit you.
If you don’t use the mouse much or you’re somewhat ambidextrous, you might try mousing with your other hand for some of each day. In my experience this drives me nuts in short order, but some people swear by it.
Ergonomic keyboard
There a lot of ergonomic keyboards out there, some more ergonomic than others. I have a Kinesis Advantage ergonomic keyboard which I use to great advantage sitting directly in my lap. I suggest you visit somewhere that you can sit down and try different ergonomic keyboards in an environment like your usual environment before you spend money on them. Ergonomic keyboards can be quite expensive and it’s a very individual thing – something that helps one person may harm another, and vice versa.
Ergonomic keyboards, especially those like the Kinesis where some of the keys are moved about, take a bit of getting used to. Try to give yourself several weeks before you “give up” using a keyboard, it’s always going to feel awkward when you start.
Here are some ergonomic keyboards – again, google for more.
Dvorak
Dvorak refers to an arrangement of keys which is different to the usual one found in English-speaking countries. The keys are arranged so the most used letters are on the keys are directly under your fingers and the letters and symbols which are used the least are further away. It takes a lot of effort to re-learn where all the keys are but typing with the Dvorak layout is much easier on the fingers because they move less. It’s worth it in the end.
I’ve written about different keyboard layouts and about learning typing with the Dvorak keyboard layout.
Dwell Clicking
Dwell clicking is done by a piece of software that tracks your mouse movements as you move your cursor around the screen. When you move your cursor to the position where you would like to click and bring your mouse to a stop for a short amount of time, the software generates a click for you. Most dwell clicking software can do double click, right click/command click and also do mouse dragging as well as regular single clicks. These are done by selecting the requested type of click from a small palette which sits on your screen.
ClickNoMo is the only stand-alone dwell clicking software for OS X that I am aware of.
Speak Instead Of Typing
MacSpeech DictateHopefully one day we’ll have Star Trek level understanding of speech, or neural interfaces where the computer is activated by thought, but until then take a stab at these methods. With all of them together – or as many as you need – you should be able to use the computer more effectively and with less pain.
- Ricky Buchanan
When I works on Windows I use program Comfort Keys for setup keyboard shortcuts (http://www.comfort-software.com/). I can see system shortcuts with this program. For Mac OS X I didn’t see better program then KeyCue.
Don’t forget taking frequent breaks! You’ll never get better if you don’t give your body a chance to heal…
@Ian: Thank you! I can’t believe I forgot this when I use a rest break timer which must have kicked in at least once while I actually wrote the article. I’m reviewing it right now to add another section.
Hi Ricky:
Great article. A couple of comments–
1) Standard ergonomic guidelines don’t take people with physical disabilities into account. For example, if you have arthritis or CP, it may be impossible–or possibly more injurious–for you to place your hands “ergonomically.”
2) I work with people who’ve gotten repetitive strain injuries, switched to speech recognition technology–and start to strain their vocal chords. Just because you’re changing your input method doesn’t mean you can stop taking regular breaks. Dictate users should also drink a lot of water–nothing with caffeine or lemon, which dehydrate you. Another cause of voice strain can be what I call “American tourist”–the program accuracy starts to go down, so the user automatically starts speaking s l o w e r and LOUDER, which both confuses the program and stresses the voice. If you think this might be an issue, record yourself or have another person listen to you to see if you’re doing this.
@Jane: Those are both very important points. Next time I update the article, I’ll add them to the main body of the text – thanks for the information.
Does anyone know if you can purchase a keyguard for a Mac computer?
I dont mean the plastic covers to protect from spills, they are usually metal with holes that help guide you to right keys on PC versions but I haven’t seen anything like this for a Mac keyboard.
Or alternatively a Keyboard that comes with a guard and is Mac compatible?
Thanks
Kati
@Kati: You can indeed purchase keyguards – I’m writing an article on it at the moment, in fact! I suggest you get in touch with http://turningpointtechnology.com/ and if they don’t have the one you want already listed on their website then email or call them about your specific keyboard. They’re very nice people!
Hi everyone, I realize this is an older article, but I felt I should give you some personal input on RSI. Should your wrists/arms start to really hurt, take a lot of time off… a week… a month… a year or more. I did not and have ruined my wrists, I am in constant pain, no amount of money is worth this. Modern medicine cannot always fix this
and I will now have to live with this for the rest of my life and I am not even close to retirement 
. Please take care, switch careers or just do without and take care of your wrists! Regards, Mb
@Marie: It’s a good point. I have long term wrist damage – not from RSI but it means I have to be constantly “babying” my wrist to make sure not to overdo it and trigger the pain to get worse. And no amount of money is more important than constant pain, I thoroughly agree.
Amen to taking as much time off as you need in order to avoid permanent damage! I failed to do this back in 92, and I’ve had to live with the consequences ever since.
For those in the same boat as me, I’d like to share what I do now to keep working. I’m afraid I love computers too much to give up on programming as a profession, so instead I’ve arranged to have someone do my typing for me. It takes a bit of getting used to, and it is of course an added expense, but there are many positive sides as well (besides just being able to get the work done): two sets of eyes on the code, worktime companionship, the chance to pass on my skills, etc. I call this relationship an apprenticeship, as it is (at least in my case) much deeper than just a human dictation machine.
So, please please please don’t mess yourself up to begin with! If you’ve already burned that bridge, however, you might look into apprenticeship.
Hi Ian, The apprenticeship is an excellent idea!
I would also like to commend Ricky on this website. I am extremely grateful for the work you do here, the recommendations as well as your honest opinions
. Just to give you an idea of how far your reach is… I live in Canada 
.
Again Ian thanks for sharing
. And as Ian said “don’t mess yourself up to begin with!” regards, Mb
@Marie: Thanks very much for the compliment – it’s great to know I can help people
I switched to using bottom of little fingers or thumbs to type. I used to be able to touch type properly with all fingers at around 200wpm but then got progressive Ataxia in my 30′s.
I can’t use a regular mouse or programs such as Mac dictate as my speech/throat muscles are also affected by it.
I now get so much intention tremor in index fingers its impossible to hit the right key first time, I was trying to hold hand and fingers stiff to be able to use the first two fingers of each hand and was getting alot of pain in hands and lower arms. It was also making arms more jerky holding them so tense so trying to hit the right key took several attempts even when only had to aim at a number key for a prediction.
I spotted a young girl on You Tube who had similar difficulties but much more severe but even she could type better using knuckle of left pinky and keep her arm relatively relaxed enough to type with speed. So I tried typing this way too and can use mac keyboard again without the keyguard and hit right keys even on the laptop. My whole arm is more relaxed and can even manage the roller trackball better and with no switch attached, managing to keep hand steady enough to get little finger or thumb through guard to press the buttons.
I try and rest after an hour of heavy typing for long blogs as I also type to communicate via a lightwriter or when I need to use a phone I have to use textphone for deaf to type all my part of conversation so typing is a big part of my life for day to day communication as well as computer access.
Another stand-alone Mac dwell clicking application, as an alternative to ClickNoMo, is DwellClick. http://dwellclick.com/