Since the beginning of the year, I’ve had a nagging pain in my right shoulder. Not a blind, stabbing pain, but just a throb and a twinge. It throbs at the end of a long day, and it twinges if I try to reach too far in any direction. Last month, as we were weeding out our book collection (which involved much heavy lifting of boxes up to and down from the attic), I noticed that my right wrist was hurting, too.
Until then, I’d put the pain down to the fact that with two kids around now, I’m doing even more heavy lifting in my day-to-day life than I was before. Fiona is still growing exponentially, it seems, and Alex still likes to be carried around a lot. But with the wrist staring to play up, my thoughts turned more towards some kind of repetitive strain injury. As a programmer, this is a bit of a scary thing to consider, because I earn my living from sitting at a desk and typing all day. My wrists are my livelihood.
So I’ve taken some steps to mitigate the problem. At home, I used to use a regular dining room-style table and chair for computer work. No more. I’ve now got a nice new desk and a proper adjustable chair to go with it. It took me a week or so to get used to the new sitting and typing arrangement, but I’m much happier with it now. Also, the new desk gives me more space to accumulate desk clutter. Excellent.
At work, I’ve switched mouse hands. I tried this a couple of years ago on a tip-off that it would help my drumming by improving the fine motor control in my left hand. I gave up on it quickly back then, but I’ve stuck with it now. I’ve been switched over for a fortnight now, and I can definitely feel the difference at the end of a day. My wrist and shoulder don’t suffer nearly as much.
Another unexpected benefit from using my left hand for mousing is that my right hand is now free for doing other things, like scribbling down notes. This has been terribly useful over the last week or so, when most of my work has consisted of scrolling through vast screeds of standards documentation and summarizing them into project compliance reports. With one hand on the mouse, and one hand on my pencil, I can just feel the productivity blazing through me. Oh yeah. I’m documentation crazy right now. Feel the burn.
You’re lucky that changing mouse hands has been pretty well positive. Last time I switched (just to do it), my typing went all to hell. It’s like my hands got the idea that it was time to question all authority, revise all habits.
Yeah, I switched for shoulder reasons a few years ago and use the mouse in my left paw apart from FPS like Unreal Tournament. Big difference, aspecially when people try and use my mouse 🙂
I haven’t switched the buttons on the mouse round though, have you?
andy
I switched the mouse to the left hand as well about four years ago, for much the same reasons. I wouldn’t say that I’m quite as proficient with it as I was with my right, but it’s now pretty good.
Given the configuration of computer keyboards, where the typing area is on the left, it makes much more sense to have the mouse on the left as well. You normally centre yourself in front on the QWERTY area if you’re a competent typist (at least I do), so having the mouse on your right hand involves more stretching than if it’s on your left. Regardless of whether your a lefty or a righty, using the mouse with your left hand is more ergonomic…
Andy – I have reversed the mouse buttons for left-handed use. I find mirroring my normal actions easier to deal with than not.
Dave – you reminded me that Frank Schaap wrote about exactly this same thing last year: http://fragment.nl/archive/2003/10/21/better_keyboard/index.php
The diNovo keyboard has a detachable numeric keypad so you can get your mouse close to the Qwerty. It looks cool, but it’s also rather expensive….
I had very serious mouse/keyboard related problems some time ago. For me it was in my wrists and keyboards. I ended up being unable to even read a book for about 3-4 weeks. Once I recovered enough to work again I started using a MS natural keyboard (original model) at work and home and a mouse mat with a rest on the front. Between them the made the difference. With shoulders I wonder whether it would be more about the relative position of shoulders to hand when doing stuff.
When I switched the mouse, I reversed the buttons as well.
And while we’re on the subject, a lot of RSI problems originate in your back and shoulders. Repetitive finger movements might express themselves as carpal tunnel, but ergonomically, desk work places a lot of stress on your shoulder and back muscles, since they have to hold the arms in fairly abnormal positions for extended periods of time. Spending a lot of time lifting and carrying small children isn’t going to help a tired back either.
So you might like to consider exercise that strengthens your back and shoulder muscles.