Tenacious Creations

 Repetitive Stress Injury, or R.S.I. is something that most of us have heard about but tend to dismiss. Most of us know someone who has had to get surgery for carpotunnel syndrome. Or we have seen or heard of ergonomic designed chairs, desks, and computer keyboards. But it something that we general dismiss not give a second thought. However each year millions of man hours are lost due to preventable repetitive stress injuries.

 A lot of bloggers myself included spend vast amounts of time in front of their computer screens happily typing away. I am particularly bad for this because when I get coding (I feel there is a huge difference between programming and coding - perhaps this will be a future post) it is not all that uncommon for me to put in 20 + hours at the keyboard with out a break. In my younger days this never seemed to bother me. However as I age I notice that my eyes, fingers and even sometimes my arms feel the strain from these coding marathons. When you are in pain or uncomfortable it can make it difficult to concentrate and both your creativity and production drop. In today’s post I am going to give you some tips to prevent repetitive stress injuries when it come to working with a computer.

 First lets discuss the lighting in the area where you generally do most of your computer work. Fluorescent lights and computer monitors just don’t mix. If you are viewing a computer monitor under fluorescent lights you will find that you get tired much quicker than if you are using incandescent light. Some one once told me this had to do with the fact that the refresh rate of the monitor and the speed of the flicker of the fluorescent tubes work in concert to speed up your brain waves. While I am not sure if there is any truth to this I can tell you that by working in natural light (when available) or with incandescent lights I find I have less eye strain. Plus I feel better come the end of the day.

 What do I use for a light? Well I have a desk lamp with a 60 watt bulb in it. Plus I turn the lamp so that the bulb is facing the ceiling as opposed to the desk. This gives me more reflected soft light and a nicer atmosphere to work in.

 The next vital piece of office equipment to discuss is your chair. The most important factor to choosing a good chair to use while working at the computer is that it has arms for you to rest your arms on. Lets’ face it, you will spend the majority of your time sitting on that chair so choose a comfortable one. A chair with a high back is preferable as this will support your back more. You will notice a difference after a day sitting in a chair with a low back as opposed to sitting in a chair with a high back. While we are talking about chairs this a good time to bring up a foot rest.

 A footrest offers proper positioning of the feet in relation to the rest of the body. Use of a foot rest can help reduce the strain on back and neck muscles. Choose a foot rest either 3″ or 6″ high as best suits your needs. You can buy these, or if you are cheap like me just use an old box that some computer hardware came in.

 Now we got you set up to be comfortable but we are not finished yet. You need to take breaks and stretch through out your day. That is where workrave comes in. Workrave is an awesome little utility that you run in the background on windows and most UNIX machines. It has timers built in that remind you to take breaks. You set up the timers in accordance to what will suit you for micro breaks and rest breaks. First let us look at the the micro break, this is just a short pause. An alert sounds telling you it is time to take a micro break, you can take the break ignore it, or post pone it. Then there is the rest break, again you can ignore it, take it, or post pone it. The neat thing with the rest break is workrave also instructs you to do a couple simple exercises. You follow these to an animated character on screen and then go take your break.

 I have been using workrave for just over a week now. It took a little while for me to get the timers set to where I like them. But after that I must say it has dramatically improved the way I feel after a long day on the computer. The biggest thing I have noticed is that my eyes do not get near as tired as they used too. Now it should be mentioned that I have been working with a healing crushed finger the past little while. The first few days where murder to type. Now with the healing and taking the breaks I have noticed a great improvement too.

 So how much would you pay to feel better after a long day toil on the keyboard? $50.00, $100.00, $1000.00 ? that’s the best part workrave is free and open source. I highly recommend you give it an honest try. It might take a bit to get your timer settings right, but once you do and use it for a while I am sure you will thank me.

Note: if there is some one out there who reads my blog and has a new ergonomic high back office chair they would like to donate to me in exchange for a review of it go to my about page and contact me. Hey a guys got to try right?

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