What can you do right now?

Some background

Around two years ago, I started experiencing pain in my hands and wrists due to long hours in front of the computer. I'd like to share what has helped me, and more importantly, the mindset I've adopted to tackle this and other similar issues.

I've experienced similar pain troubles before as a teenager after practicing a particularly difficult piece on guitar, and remember sitting around with an ice bag on my hand for hours. My mother and grandmother both suffer from arthritis in their hands, and I would prefer to avoid that myself as far as possible.

I wasn't (and to be honest, am still not) financially in a position to splurge money on an ergonomic keyboard that promises to solve all of my problems. I needed to find other solutions, and it was a blessing in disguise.

Solving the problem

The first thing was learning how to type properly. I never really considered that there was a proper hand posture and "allowed" keys per finger that was part of correct typing posture, beyond the basic knowledge that one's fingers should rest on the home row. Websites like keybr and monkeytype was invaluable for getting me into shape.

After a few months of touch typing, and although much improved, I still had some residual pain and fatigue - It was time to dig a little deeper. Research led me to alternative keyboard layouts, and I settled with Colemak-dh in the end. It was a bitch to learn, but manageable, and eventually I became comfortable with the layout. Emphasis on comfort. Holy hell, does colemak feel comfy.

By this point I was just levitating, and comparitively, it was pretty much perfect. There was just one thing left that eventually started to bother me. Like a princess losing sleep to a silly pea, I became sensitive to any remaining discomfort in my typing. I was looking at my modifier keys (alt, control, shift, super), and something had to be done.

These keys are so often used, but yet you are required to contort your hand each time you use them. Surely there must be a better way? Enter home row modifiers - modifier when I hold the key down, and the regular old letter when tapped. Control on index, Alt on middle, Shift on ring, and Super on pinky. I'm really not sure whether the switch to Colemak or this change here has been the biggest gain in typing comfort.

Takeaway

All of this demanded some adjustment and work... but at least it didn't cost me any moneys. Say I had the money, and bought a fancy keyboard and never did any of this - I am certain I would not have gained half of the benefits I did by finding and implementing some obscure hacks to my problem.

One day, I will buy the fancy keyboard, but until then there's really a lot of things I was able do to get me 85% of the way to solving my issues, where money wasn't the bottleneck.

Contrary to what you might tell yourself, that if only you had this or that, you would be golden - you can probably at least be silver right now if you put your mind to it. Silver is pretty good, no?

I have bad back posture from sitting all day, and a fancy standing desk could solve it. Guess I'll just buy a yoga ball to sit on for now instead.