Remote workers need to be especially vigilant about avoiding Repetitive Stain Injury (RSI). We may be more susceptible to it because coffee shops, airline tray tables, and kitchen tables aren’t designed as computer workstations. I asked licensed massage therapist Wimsey Cherrington, who specializes in treating patients with repetitive strain injuries, to share some low-cost techniques:

1. Take frequent breaks. Don’t work at your computer for long stretches at a time. Take breaks frequently, preferably every 45 minutes. We wrote about some of the apps that encourage taking breaks a few years ago; there are now more options for desktops, laptops, tablets and phones.
2. Relax. Cherrington reminded me that “the shoulders should hang effortlessly from the body,” but workers tend to hunch up, leading to shoulder and neck stress. She says that when not actually typing, such as when we’re reading or talking on the phone, we should try to relax our shoulders. And of course, everyone should use a headset when talking on the phone.
3. Exercise. During breaks, do arm and shoulder exercises. Cherrington recommended exercises similar to these, as they will help reduce stress on the upper body. I find number 7, “releasing the neck,” and number 14, “shaking out tension,” to be particularly useful.
4. Keep your feet comfortable. Many of us spend most of our day sitting down, but we shouldn’t forget our lower extremities. If you’re in a corporate environment and must wear dress shoes, put them on when you get to work, but wear something comfortable for the commute. And always wear shoes with back straps — no flip-flops! And if you have the freedom to not wear shoes at your workstation, there are a number of simple exercises you can do, like “ankle circles.” Some exercises use a foot roller, which is sort of like a miniature rolling-pin that you can use to reduce stress.
5. Position yourself for comfort. Set your keyboard low and your chair high. Your elbow should be at a 90 degree angle, and your forearm as close to horizontal as possible.
6. Lose the back pocket. Don’t keep wallets and other thick items in back pockets to prevent sciatica and related conditions.
7. Find the right keyboard and mouse. Get a keyboard and mouse that are comfortable for you. Even on the road, if you’re planning to do a lot of work, consider taking an external keyboard and mouse, since laptops’ ergonomics are limited. But no matter what hardware you use, Cherrington agrees with many of those who commented on Thursday’s recent post that it is important to change positions frequently. There are also specialty ergonomic mice like the VerticalMouse and the Smartfish Whirl Laser Mouse, which can tilt forward, back and from to side to side while you move it. Smartfish sent me one to try, and while it took some getting used to, I’ve become a regular user. The Whirl Laser Mouse retails for $49.95 from the Smartfish website.
8. Use a stand for your laptop or tablet. If you’re using a laptop, an iPad or other tablet, get a case that can be set up as a stand using different angles. I like the ZooGue Case Genius for my original iPad; a version for the iPad 2 will be available soon.
9. Check your eyeglass prescription. Cherrington says that a surprising number of cases of neck strain can be traced to people who are leaning forward because their eyeglass prescriptions are out-of-date. If you need to lean forward to see your screen, it might be time to get your eyes checked.
10. Look for ergonomic hotel space. It can be difficult to find ergonomic places to work while on the road, although some business hotels are now offering better desks and chairs. But Cherrington suggests to look for hotels with exercise opportunities. Even if a hotel doesn’t have a gym or exercise room, they may be able to provide yoga mats and small exercise equipment in your room.
11. Get regular tune-ups. We’re used to getting the oil changed in our cars regularly, but we’re sometimes not as good at maintaining ourselves. Cherringtom suggests you should consult a health professional once a quarter, and don’t wait until you experience pain, tightness or discomfort. But if you get a flare-up, don’t try to “work through” pain — stop what you’re doing and get help.

What do you do to improve ergonomics and avoid RSI?

Photo courtesy sxc.hu user ljleavell

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Optimize Your USB Flash Drive. Many people own USB flash drives that they got as gifts or were passed on from someone else, and high-capacity versions have become very cheap. Even on drives with relatively low capacity, you can put entire suites of freeware and open-source applications on your flash drive, keep it in your pocket, and have useful applications to use no matter where you are, even if you need to work on someone else’s computer. PortableApps is my favorite site for downloading a suite of Windows apps optimized for a flash drive, while MacLibre is a good equivalent for people on Macs.

Next-Gen Note Taking. Recently, I’ve been using the Livescribe Pulse smartpen (shown above), which you can get for $149 to $199, for capturing digital notes. It’s a writing instrument, but it has a computer and camera onboard. As you jot down notes on special paper (it has millions of dots embedded in it), every move you make is digitally captured so that you can take handwritten notes right into software applications. What makes it better than other similar digital pens is that it also records audio, and creates a time line so that you can jump to various parts of a recording and review anything you were taking notes on at that point. Highly recommended.

Better Battery Life. Low battery life remains a chief complaint among users of portable computers, but there are a number of simple steps you can take to radically improve it. In this post, you’ll find nine tips that can make a big difference. Also, this post illustrates how much juice the display on your portable computer consumes, which is an incredible amount. One of the quickest and easiest ways to get much more battery life is simply to turn your brightness down.

The Lowly Mouse. In my post, “Nine Ways to Make Your Mouse Roar,” I made the point that many of us spend more time sitting with a computer and a mouse than we do with any person. The post details a number of ways to get more out of your mouse (not many people read mouse documentation), including using a scroll wheel directly within productivity applications, scrolling horizontally, and speed scrolling without using the scroll wheel.

Get More From Wi-Fi. Many of us rely on Wi-Fi all day long, but I am constantly surprised by how many people there are who don’t optimize their Wi-Fi setups. As just one example, a couple of years ago, I wrote this post, recommending using access points around a home, and many commenters responded that they use a router only for home Wi-Fi, and haven’t considered access points. That’s fine in some homes, but in others, especially larger ones, an under-$50 access point can provide huge performance and range benefits. Check out more tips on inexpensive Wi-Fi hardware upgrades here.

Share your hardware tips in the comments.

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New applications or enhancements to existing ones can provide big efficiency benefits, but there are also many simple tweaks, unsung tips, and new ways to think about the tools that you already use that can help you work better. In this post, I’ll share five ways that can help you accomplish more and experience less hassle. You can take advantage of many of these tips in minutes.

Double Up On Monitors. We’ve covered the efficiency benefits of using dual monitors before. While some users like sitting in front of one giant monitor these days, for the same cost you can buy two (or more) reasonably priced monitors, put them side-by-side on your desktop, and use the displays as one fluid desktop. I recently switched to this kind of setup, and I’ll never go back. The time I save simply loading web pages and applications is substantial, and it’s also just easier to work this way. Windows XP and Vista both offer dual-monitor support out of the box, as does Mac OS X. Give it a go if you haven’t tried it.

Flex Your Mouse Muscle. Some of the most surprised comments I’ve ever gotten for any post on this blog came in response to a post called, “Nine Ways to Make Your Mouse Roar.” I made the point there that you may well spend more time with your mouse each day than you do with any person, and yet, a lot of people install a mouse without ever consulting the documentation and finding out what it’s capable of. Do you have a mouse with a scroll wheel? If so, in any tabbed browser, just click your scroll wheel while hovering over a link on the web to open it in a new tab. Or try this: In the middle of a web page you’re looking at, click once on your scroll wheel. Your cursor should change shape. Moving up and down with the mouse will let you scroll the page, and do speed scrolling. If your eyes are tired, hold your Ctrl key down and lightly push your scroll wheel up a few notches. The size of the text on the page you’re looking at will increase, and you can  hold Ctrl and scroll back down to return it to normal size. There are many more of these tips in the original post.

Become a Word Power User. There are plenty of nifty ways to squeeze more productivity from Microsoft Word and make it easier to use. For example, if you need to leave a document but want to have your cursor sitting right where you left it in the middle of an editing session when you return, you don’t have to leave your document open. Go ahead and close it. When you reopen it to resume editing, hit Shift+F5 to take your cursor back to precisely where you left it. Do you have multiple Word documents open and need to take a break? To rapidly save all open documents, hold down the Shift key and go to Word’s “File” menu. The usual “Save” menu choice will show up as “Save All.” There are many more of these tips in the posts above. Check out this post and this one for more essential efficiency tips.

Get More Out of Outlook. While it’s almost nobody’s favorite email application, many of us must use Microsoft Outlook for work. If you do, you’ll find eight good efficiency tips for it in this post. For example:  Do you often forget to respond to important Outlook messages? To set a reminder — visible in your Inbox — to act on or reply to any message, right-click on the message you want to set the reminder for, select Follow Up, and choose your Due By time and date. When you click OK, the message will be flagged for you to remember to respond to it.

Reboot Your Wi-Fi. In this recent post, I described how important it is to do a regular, cycled reboot on your home Wi-Fi setup. I also described how the combination of the cycled reboot and changing Wi-Fi channels can eliminate dropped signals and other common problems. Several readers provided comments with Wi-Fi efficiency tips of their own, including free, open-source firmware applications that can give you much more control over your Wi-Fi router, and better performance through boosted signals. Many of us are very dependent on Wi-Fi all day, so look into how a few simple tips can help you be more wirelessly efficient.

Share your tips for boosting efficiency in the comments.

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The VerticalMouse is a rather large (the picture shows it next to an Apple mouse for comparison) device that communicates with the computer via a dedicated wireless USB receiver. It has to be large because of its one special feature: it’s designed to grip with your hand rotated 90 degrees from what you probably think of as normal mousing position. Your thumb goes on the left side of the mouse, and your fingers on the right side, as if you were reaching out to shake someone’s hand (sorry, lefties, they don’t have a model for you). Evoluent’s marketing talks about this being an arm-neutral position; I just know it’s a comfortable one.

The VerticalMouse has five buttons including a scroll wheel. Though its included drivers are for Windows only, I’m happily using it on a Mac Pro with USB Overdrive, which gives it plenty of programmability. The sensitivity is plenty high enough to use comfortably with a pair of high-resolution monitors as well.

At $120, the VerticalMouse is higher priced than much of its competition. But given how much time I spend moving the cursor around every day, I’m finding it a worthwhile investment.

Got a mouse of your own to recommend?

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I was reminded of this debate by a blog entry from Hank Williams, who was reacting to the recent launch of Ubiquity (which our sister blog OStatic covered). Ubiquity provides a very keyboard-oriented interface, though it includes some mouse affordances as well. After pointing out that keyboardists and mousers are different, he goes on to admit

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a fairly fast typist. But my problem is I can’t remember commands. Putting a keyboard command in my head is like putting sand in a sieve. The reason I love graphical interfaces is because I can’t remember shit.

I find this interesting on several fronts. First, as anyone who was using computers in the 1980s can tell you, working with a mouse is not an inborn skill. I can remember agonizing hours in beginning computer classes, teaching people how to point, click, and manage the feedback loop between their hand and the screen. Yet despite that, the overwhelming majority of computer users today are comfortable with a mouse – and from observing quite a few people, I’d suggest that the mouse ends up feeling like the more natural user interface for many.

The other thing that amazes me is the amount of sheer invective that Williams got in his comments. Apparently, at least in some developer circles, being a mouser makes one a target of derision. I’m in the same boat here: I use a few keyboard shortcuts in my most frequent applications, but by and large I’m a mouser. This hasn’t hampered my ability to write software, but perhaps I should stop admitting this in public.

As a web worker, the obvious question is which is better for productivity: mouse dependency or heavy keyboard usage? Unfortunately, the research on this is far from definitive. There’s an Ask Tog article that gets bandied about, purporting to show that mousing is faster than keyboarding. But this article is from 1989, from an Apple advocate, at a time when Apple was trying mightily to make the case for the mouse – so it’s at best suspect. Others have argued just as strenuously that keyboards are big time-savers.

Ultimately, of course, what matters is what makes you more productive, not what works for the mythical average computer user. Very few (if any) people are exclusive mousers or exclusive keyboardists. In today’s world of switching between multiple complex applications, I suspect most of us have found our own level of learning a few important keyboard commands that really help us, and rely on the mouse for the rest.

How about you? Where do you come down on this debate?

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