Some tips for dealing with and recovering from RSI and carpal tunnel
Link for ease of sharing: http://stevenzhang.com/rsi
I’ve struggled with wrist/arm pain / carpal tunnel / repetitive stress injury around computer usage since college. It got quite bad during April 2020 after COVID lockdowns. After not typing for a few weeks, I regrouped and started a multi-month path to recovery. Here’s what I’ve found helpful, your mileage will vary, but hopefully this gives you some inspiration!
Basic information
Best Overview podcast https://www.healthyhacker.com/7
Book: It’s Not Carpal Tunnel Syndrome!: RSI Theory and Therapy for Computer Professional
List of videos around this topic: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuP57YpE0fAMCJ_TzxR-cFrF5u4gRenv9
My equipment setup
Keyboard
- Ergodox-Ez with Colemak layout
- Vertical tenting using these book frames: https://amzn.to/2AE1rjE
- I map my right keypad big key to the left mouse click effect, which helps with reducing mouse usage and hand movement
Mouse
- Three way foot pedal map to scroll up, scroll down, left mouse click: https://amzn.to/3htBDHR
- Trackpad/tablet for when I’m not using eye tracking (see below): https://amzn.to/3RlrzSO
Voice typing
For a while after the flareup in April 2020, I used a lot of voice dictation and commands. I do much less so these days.
Voice typing/dictation
- Gboard voice typing on Android- This is the most accurate voice dictation software I’ve used, Google does a bunch of machine learning on your Google account data that’s wild, so dictating friends names works almost all the time
Voice commands
- https://talonvoice.com/ I find Talon has a really great community and super easy to use commands
Eye tracking
- Talon also supports eye tracking (see demo:Talon Eye Tracking — Zoom Mouse )
- To use it however , you have to use this hardware, an eye tracker commonly used for gaming: Tobii Eye Tracker
- This doesn’t work a hundred percent of the time, but I have a large monitor just being able to move quickly across the monitor and then doing the last micro adjustment using my trackpad/trackball saves a lot of time and arm movement
Armaid
The Armaid is by far the most massage useful tool I’ve found for dealing with flareups. A lot of RSI pain is from forearm muscles/attachment points (which one then feels in the hands), and this tool helps with that. I have 3 Armaids- one for every place I travel frequently to (parent/extended family houses, etc.)
