My own battle with RSI

A couple of weeks back, I found myself in a bad situation.

My right hand was feeling numb and every time I try to clench it, I felt pain up to my wrist. I had this condition for two days which scared me stiff. During first day I just ignored the numbness and pain thinking I just probably slept on my hand. But when the sensation, or the lack thereof persisted till the 2nd day, that drove me to imagine the worst.

This condition is not uncommon to people who are in front of the computer all day. So I decided to do some research on how I can prevent RSI and here are some of the solutions I implemented.

Most Repetitive Stress Injury (RSI) cases is about “overusing” a part of our body, in my case the arms and hands. The observance of proper Ergonomics is important in preventing the overuse. When typing, the angle between your upper arm and lower arm should be at 90 degrees. So I adjusted my seat accordingly to achieve the proper angle.

Second, instead of relying too much on the mouse, I configured my desktop (KDE) to force me to type. I removed all the icons from the task bar, including the “View Desktop” and configured it that I have to type CTRL + F12 every time I need to run a program or view the desktop. This breaks the static load on the right hand due to reliance on the mouse. This needs time getting used too since we've been so dependent on the mouse.

I also installed Workrave, an RSI prevention program, a free software which runs on Linux and Windows OS. According to their website:

“Workrave is a program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). The program frequently alerts you to take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit”

So I configured my micro-pauses every 15 minutes with a 30 second break, my rest breaks every hour with 5 minute break and a maximum of 8 hours of computing per day. I also made sure that during the breaks I cannot input anything. When you start your computer, Workrave immediately starts the monitoring.

Now I'm feeling better and hopefully my tips can work for you too.