Work Smarter

Learn touch-typing. With regular practice, you can easily ramp up to 40 words per minute and above, in a matter of four to six weeks. This will greatly help you reduce the time you take to get your work done.

Keyboard shortcuts (make the mouse redundant)! The best part of keyboard shortcuts is just that-shortcuts! They are mighty helpful in lessening the time spent on the computer. For example, if you want to see your desktop, it makes much more sense using the [WINDOWS]+ [D] combination rather than clicking on the ‘Show Desktop’ icon in your taskbar.

Exercises

The human body was designed to perform tasks such as farming and hunting, rather than sitting at the table and hammering away at the keyboard. So even with the best of ergonomics, you are bound to put some stress on your shoulders, neck, and wrists. The best way to tone things up is by doing some very simple exercises. These will help both stretch and strengthen the muscles that you use. Here I have focused on stretching exercises for the neck, shoulders, and the wrists because these are the parts stressed the most. While exercises go a long way in prevention and advancement of these conditions, don’t do them if you already have advanced symptoms. The best thing to do then would be to consult a surgeon.

Broadly, there are two types of exercises-stretchers and strengtheners. There are exercises for every muscle group under both categories.

How to reduce chances of developing CVS

Here are a few Tips That Might Help

Choose the right monitor, one that has an adjustable angle with a flat screen. Pick one that has high dot pitch, that can support high refresh rates, and has a high pixel count (To change refresh rate, right-click on the desktop and go to ‘Properties I Settings I Advanced I Monitor I Monitor setting’. Set the refresh rate to at least 72 and above. This will depend on your monitor, so look up the manual for the maximum refresh rate for each resolution.)

Blink frequently. Once you make a conscious effort to do this, it will soon become a habit. If you are unfortunate enough to already be suffering from dry eyes, then use simple eye-drops such as Itone.

Look away from the computer screen regularly and also try to look at distant objects every so often.

Clean the screen frequently, using a damp cloth.

Reduce the glare on your screen coming from open windows, bright lights, etc.

Mechanical vs. Membrane Keyboards

This Post is a part of our Ergonomic series. If you haven’t read the earlier posts click here or follow the link in the sidebar.

Some of us swear by the membrane ones, while others swear by the mechanical ones. While the mechanical ones produce a lot of noise, they are much more durable and most importantly, the latency period between keystrokes is less for the mechanical ones. This translates into less time required for doing the same amount of typing, and hence less injury!

Keyboards that claim to reduce your time by up to 20 to 30 percent are not always good. Before buying one, make sure that when you use the special ‘Cut’ or ‘Copy’ key located on one end of the keyboard, you are not moving your arms widely-this will damage the shoulder and is akin to reaching for the mouse.

The palm rest: Use the palm rest to rest your palms in-between typing spells ratherthan duringthetyping itself. If you sense using the [WINDOWS]+ [D] combination rather than clicking on the ‘Show Desktop’ icon in your taskbar.

Dvorak Keyboards

August Dvorak invented the alternate Dvorak keyboard in an attempt to reduce the learning time for learning touch-typing, and to reduce the ‘distance that the fingers had to travel for doing the same amount of typing. The fingers have to travel2D times less on a Dvorak keyboard! The main reason is that the most commonly typed keys are immediately under the fingers (rather than in the Qwerty, where you have to move away often from the home keys­asdf and ;Ikj. When using any typing software, the very first time you have to specify the keyboard layout (QWERTY or Dvorak) that you wish to work with.


With Dvorak, one should be able to reduce the learning time considerably. And guess what? Windows allows to you change the layout of your keyboard to Dvorak! In Windows XP, go to ‘Control panel I Regional Languages and Options I Languages I Details I Installed Services I Add |Input language (US English) and Layout (Dvorak)’. This brings out a small keyboard icon in the taskbar called the Language bar. You can now right-click this icon to obtain the choices for the Qwerty or the Dvorak keyboard. (In Windows 95/98/Me/20DO go to ‘Control panel’, double-click ‘Keyboard I Language Tab I Properties I United States Dvorak’)

Natural Keyboards.

The Microsoft Natural Keyboard is unique for the following reasons:
It is split into two, parts, so that your shoulders are not cramped. The keyboard is designed to accommodate the natural slope of your hands. To test this, hold your hands in a natural typing position and you will notice that your little finger falls lower than the index or middle one.


The keys are arranged at an angle. The ones in the middle are lower down and they radiate outwards. This serves a very important purpose. When you type on a normal keyboard, your wrists tend to angle outwards. This puts a lot of stress on the outer side of your wrist and the natural keyboard helps minimize just that.