The Functional Programmer – Keeping Repetitive Strain Injury at Bay [video](blog.lunarlogic.io) |
The Functional Programmer – Keeping Repetitive Strain Injury at Bay [video](blog.lunarlogic.io) |
1) take up active hobbies that strengthen vulnerable body parts. Rock climbing did wonders for keeping my De Quervain's tendinitis from returning.
2) stretching is an enormous part of recovery, if you've already developed tendinitis.
3) fix your posture. I didn't realize that I was craning my head forward over the years to compensate for poorly corrected astigmatism.
4) vary your environment. A convertible sit/stand desk along with an adjustable monitor arm should allow you to change up your position many times per day.
5) never spend extended periods with your arm extended to the mouse, resting your arm's weight on your wrist. This is probably the single worst thing for your wrists (aside from impact injury).
6) invest in a decent mechanical keyboard. Consistent, light key resistance is more important than ergonomic layouts, not that I have anything against properly executed ergo.
7) WALK! Get up, stretch your head back and your arms up. Go for a walk around the block while maintaining proper posture. No staring at your phone. It does wonders to reset your body and would have saved me years of pain if I'd done it regularly.
To anyone suffering RSI, get into physical therapy. They'll teach you valuable stretches and exercises that will be useful for the rest of your life.
Probably the single most important thing is this: try to deal with injury before it becomes chronic. If your wrists seem sore or you get tingling sensations, seek help before you develop an injury that's going to take months or years to heal!
Things that have worked well for me (cheap solutions):
- Use a keyboard that doesn't encourage you to 'bottom out' to execute a key press. I used to use a keyboard with scissor switches that I think just encouraged me to press the keys harder. I switched it out for a cheapo mech keyboard with MX brown switches and I think this helped a bit.
- Remap common keys like control to other keys that can be easily hit with your thumbs. Currently I map control to left alt and backspace to right alt. Makes a difference for me but ymmv. Try not to hit so many keys with your pinky. For example, when I need to hit return, I make an effort to use my ring finger instead.
- Got a lumbar support pad for my office chair and car seat. I have a lower back and hip pain. This helps with the sciatic nerve painI have had since college.
- Use a very tall wrist rest. The cheap ones don't really elevate your wrists much, but find a quality one that provides an inch or more of lift. If you have a desk with a keyboard tray, lower it to comfortable position.
- Lift weights. I spent a year in grad school lifting hard with a buddy three times a week. Did wonders for my back pain. I would love to find a new lifting partner and get back into it.
What I'm considering (expensive solutions):
- A standing desk. I'm seeing a lot of people in my office switch to these and I want one.
- A split keyboard with lots of thumb keys. This is always on my mind now and I'm trying to decide between a kinesis and keyboard.io.
As soon as I switched to this opposite side leader key, my emacs pinky went away.
[1] Evoluent [2] Kinesis Freestyle2
In my case, I think it was the bad posture, smartphone use, and laptop use in bed which continued to damage the tendons, despite the ergonomic setup I used during the day at work.
Well cared for workers tend to be more productive workers though.
My brain likes picking up loot, but my hands don't :(
The problem I have with this is that I don't feel much difference between regular fatigue and pre-chronic-injury kinds of damage. Typically by the time I can even identify the discomfort as non-transient, I'm already in for weeks/months/years of recovery.
I have managed to cause instant tendinitis where it basically felt like intense muscle pain, but that was a rare shock-load situation.
Most fatigue is just a drained feeling, followed by some muscle soreness for one to three days. Soreness in tendons and joints is almost always a problem, in my experience. If it doesn't clear up in about three days of relative rest, you're heading into chronic injury territory.
In my experience, if it doesn't clear up in three days, I'm already there (and usually also have no fucking idea what I did to cause the injury).
The more I look into this, the more I suspect that in my case it's a sensory deficit, i.e. I literally can't feel the initial pre-injury discomfort that trains most people not to move/position their bodies in ways that acutely damage joints or connective tissues.